Good Budi

Good Budi is a member of the Empty Hand whose story entwines unreturned love, violence, and a striking capacity for reconciliation. First introduced as the man who threatens Ajo Kawir and helps leave him injured in the street, he is also Iteung’s former academy companion, a suitor she repeatedly rejects, and a friend who eventually attends her wedding. His later death at Iteung’s hands gives that complicated history a brutal end.

Identity and Background

Good Budi belongs to the Empty Hand, a group whose members enforce their authority through violence. He met Iteung at the academy, where they became friends; she had also taken work for the group, though she had never accepted a killing assignment. Good Budi had given her work on many occasions, so their connection preceded his attempt to claim a more intimate place in her life.

His feelings for Iteung were persistent but not reciprocated. He called, invited her to the movies, visited, sent flowers and birthday gifts, and repeatedly declared his love. Iteung refused his invitations and told him angrily that she was not his girlfriend. Good Budi nevertheless began telling other people that she was. The conflict between his self-assigned claim and her clear refusals becomes central to his role in the plot.

Threats and the Attack on Ajo Kawir

Good Budi turns his private claim into public intimidation when he intercepts Ajo Kawir on the street with four other members of the Empty Hand. He orders Ajo Kawir to leave Iteung and abandon any thought of marrying her, presenting the threat as a condition of survival. Ajo Kawir refuses to accept that Good Budi can forbid the marriage. The confrontation makes plain that Good Budi’s asserted romance is backed not by Iteung’s consent but by a group’s capacity for violence.

The five men attack Ajo Kawir as he walks home alone from Iteung’s house. Good Budi identifies himself during the encounter; after Ajo Kawir falls, he stamps on Ajo Kawir’s right hand and kicks him in the jaw, while the others keep him from getting up. Good Budi invokes the Empty Hand to warn against crossing the group. Ajo Kawir is left by the roadside, and a passing minibus driver takes him to Iteung’s house rather than the hospital he declines. The attack endangers the couple’s plans, but it also exposes the contradiction in Good Budi’s conduct: he claims a place in Iteung’s life while using force against the man she loves.

The Academy and the Reversal of Power

Good Budi’s history with Iteung is not only a story of pursuit and refusal; it also includes a formative fight between them at the academy. During their sparring, he kicked her in the jaw and left her briefly on the ground, but she got up and challenged him to fight in earnest rather than treating her as an easy opponent. Good Budi let his guard down, assuming she was spent. Iteung caught him with a surprise kick and followed with a rapid series of punches until he fainted. Their teacher was alarmed by her ferocity, while Good Budi later acknowledged her growing skill, telling her that she had already become more accomplished than he was. He said he would always remember the way they had fought each other. The episode gives their later conflict a history of mutual recognition: Iteung is neither merely the woman he pursues nor a passive object of the group’s power, but a fighter whose ability he has personally experienced.

The relationship also turns, for a time, into a sexual one. Iteung initiates their encounters and directs their terms; Good Budi follows her instructions, and she reflects on this intimacy as a way of winning a struggle she cannot resolve by force alone. That history complicates the later rejection without changing its meaning: Good Budi’s access to Iteung at one point does not make her his partner, and her decision to marry Ajo Kawir is explicit. His ensuing plea against the marriage therefore comes from a relationship marked by friendship and intimacy, but it cannot override her choice.

Reconciliation, Death, and Narrative Role

Good Budi’s story briefly moves beyond rivalry. A few days after the attack, Iteung and Gecko went to his house, where he was with the four other members of the Empty Hand. Iteung and Gecko confronted them; Iteung beat Good Budi, and Gecko helped repay the group for what it had done to Ajo Kawir. The retaliation settled the immediate score without leaving the five men abandoned in the street as Ajo Kawir had been. Later, Good Budi came to Ajo Kawir and Iteung’s wedding with a gift, embraced Ajo Kawir, wished the couple well, and asked forgiveness for the earlier assault. Ajo Kawir accepted the gesture. As the celebration ended, Iteung and Good Budi were laughing together, and Ajo Kawir, watching from a distance, was relieved that their friendship had survived and that he need not fear further revenge from the Empty Hand.

That reconciliation does not erase the harm or make Good Budi’s possessive claim legitimate; instead, it shows how friendship, intimacy, violence, and forgiveness coexist in his history with Iteung. His final turn is darker. When Iteung later confronts him, she recognizes that he has gone soft and attacks him, refusing to let him escape; she slams his head against a wall, and he collapses and stops moving. The novel thus gives Good Budi neither a simple identity as antagonist nor a redemptive ending: the rejected suitor who once used group violence against Ajo Kawir becomes a wedding guest capable of apology, but his past with Iteung ends in lethal violence. Through him, the story tests the difference between affection and entitlement, and between reconciliation as a real change in relations and forgiveness as no guarantee of safety.