Iteung learns to fight at the Kalimasada Silat Academy after explicitly asking for instruction that will let her protect herself. The episode makes her training more than a display of toughness: it begins with her naming a need, continues through punishing discipline, and culminates in a public bout that changes how her ability is judged. Her resolve is formed in a setting where fighting is taught as a practical skill, a source of courage, and a way to establish standing among others.

Choosing to Learn

When asked what class she wanted, Iteung rejected the suggestion of academic tutoring and said she wanted to learn how to fight. At the academy’s enrollment table, she gave her name assertively and, asked why she wanted training, answered that she wanted to protect herself. The choice is direct: she identifies a vulnerability and seeks a skill she can use in response, rather than treating self-protection as someone else’s responsibility.

The academy itself has a history that complicates the meaning of that choice. Its founder, Kyai Abdul Kadir, had been a commander in the twelve-year civil war between the republican army and Islamic rebels. After the rebels’ defeat, some former guerrillas joined his school, an effort intended to offer them an alternative to association with soldiers who might later turn against them. Under his son, however, the religious instruction and practical lessons in sewing, farming, and managing loans disappeared. The school became a martial arts academy whose students came to learn how to fight effectively and to discover what courage felt like. Iteung enters this changed institution for a purpose grounded in protection, within a place increasingly defined by combat and courage.

Discipline and Training

Iteung’s progress is presented through exertion before it is demonstrated in a fight. While running around the edge of the soccer field, she continues after most of the others have stopped. She has already completed more than fifty circuits and has set herself a goal of seventy. Her legs are tired, but she insists on completing the planned distance rather than stopping or walking. The teacher watching her calls her frightening; the description makes her willpower, not merely physical ability, the first evidence of what she brings to training.

That self-command carries into her sparring. Iteung challenges Good Budi for not fighting in earnest and refuses to accept the idea that she has lost before she collapses and cannot get up. The exchange places her in a setting where courage is tested in public and where persistence matters even when she is taking hits. Her determination does not mean she is untouched by the contest: the other students witness Good Budi landing most of his attacks, and Iteung’s face is visibly bruised. The scene establishes both the cost of the test and her refusal to let that cost decide its outcome.

The Bout with Good Budi

Good Budi initially gains the upper hand and assumes that Iteung is already spent. That assumption briefly lowers his guard. Iteung uses the opening to kick him in the nose, knock him down, and get on top of him; she then strikes him until he loses consciousness. The reversal is sudden, but it grows from the qualities already established in her training: persistence, readiness to continue, and the ability to act when an opponent underestimates her.

The fight takes place in a large field behind the academy, with their friends standing in a circle to watch. It is therefore not only a private measure of competence. Good Budi’s defeat is witnessed by the group, and the teacher again calls Iteung frightening before ordering others to tend to both students. Good Budi later tells her that in very little time she has become more of an ace than he is. His admission confirms a shift in their relative standing: the girl he had attacked and presumed exhausted is recognized by her defeated opponent as the more accomplished fighter.

Significance and Wider Context

The episode distinguishes learning to fight from a simple appetite for violence. Iteung’s stated reason is protective, while the academy’s broader appeal includes the wish to fight effectively and to feel courageous. Her training gives that abstract aim a concrete form: repeated laps, a set target, an opponent, witnesses, and a result that overturns expectation. The skill she seeks becomes legible through practice and through recognition by others.

The story’s surrounding world also shows that violence takes forms far beyond a training bout. The Empty Hand is described as a group whose members may be paid to kill and who are skilled with weapons; at the Rubber Plantation Fighting Pit, soldiers organize fights for spectators and gambling, sometimes bringing in people from military operations. Against those forms of violence, the academy’s training has a distinct immediate purpose in Iteung’s account: she wants the ability to protect herself. The contrast does not make combat harmless, as her sparring shows, but it clarifies why she chooses to enter the academy and why her persistence there matters.