The three policemen who died had been guarding a parade route. The procession had not yet passed when the bombs detonated, meaning the officers were standing in position, exposed, waiting for a crowd that would never arrive. Police Officer Ridho Setiawan, recently promoted, was killed. His body was flown home to Lampung province. Police Officer Taufan Tsunami and Police Officer Imam Gilang Adinata also died; Adinata's remains were sent to his family in Klaten, Central Java. The targeting was deliberate. Investigators later determined that the bombers belonged to the Mudiriyah Bandung Raya, a cell affiliated with ISIS whose ideology classified Indonesian police officers as "enemy number one" and infidels. For the officers' families, ideology was irrelevant. Their sons had been standing in a bus terminal doing their jobs.

The investigation moved quickly. Debris analysis revealed that the bombs were improvised explosive devices built from pressure cookers packed with TATP -- the same peroxide-based explosive used in the Manchester Arena bombing just two days earlier and half a world away. A purchase receipt found on one of the bombers' remains traced the pressure cookers to a department store in Padalarang, Bandung, bought on May 22, two days before the attack. Police identified the first bomber as Ichwan Nurul Salam after raiding his house in Cibangkong, Bandung, the morning after the attack. Officers removed documents and books, and transported Salam's wife and children to a police station. The second bomber, Ahmad Sukri, was identified through an identity card found at the blast site. His house in West Bandung was cordoned; his mother, who lived with him, was taken for a DNA test. Both men had connections to Bahrun Naim, the Indonesian ISIS operative in Syria who had masterminded the 2016 Jakarta attacks on Jalan Thamrin.

In the chaos that followed the blasts, social media became a weapon turned on the innocent. Identity cards dropped by bystanders who had rushed to help survivors went viral online, their holders accused of being the bombers. Wiryawan Indra Wijaya, a resident of Sukabumi, had to be publicly cleared by police after his card was found at the scene. Vicky Kurniyanto faced the same ordeal. Most striking was the case of Rinton Girsang, a former police officer from Medan. His facial features bore a resemblance to the widely shared photograph of a severed head from the blast site, and the internet convicted him within hours. Police confirmed that Girsang was living in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, and had no involvement whatsoever. He eventually recorded a video asking the public to stop linking him to the attackers. The National Agency for Combating Terrorism urged people to stop sharing graphic photographs, warning that "doing such action would please the terrorists."

The hashtags appeared within the hour -- #PrayForJakarta and #KamiTidakTakut, the same "We Are Not Afraid" rallying cry that had followed the 2016 Thamrin attacks. Facebook activated its safety check. The Kampung Melayu terminal was closed; the Otto Iskandardinata intersection sealed off. President Joko Widodo visited the blast site the following night, accompanied by the vice president, the intelligence chief, and the deputy police commander. He demanded that the Indonesian Representative Council approve a stalled anti-terrorism bill immediately, declaring that "there is no place in our country for terrorism to grow." Religious institutions added their voices. The Indonesian Ulema Council stated that "violence in the name of any religion is a crime on humanity." Muhammadiyah, one of the country's largest Islamic organizations, called the attack "heinous and uncivilized" and added: "Terrorism knows no religion." The collective response reflected a nation that had been through this before and refused to let violence define its identity.

By late June, police had arrested 41 people in connection with the Kampung Melayu bombing, nine of them principal suspects. Twenty-six of those detained had links to Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), the same network behind the 2016 Samarinda church bombing. The Kampung Melayu attackers had been connected to a cell in Bandung, itself linked to the Cicendo attacker arrested in March 2017. The web was dense and overlapping. Ahmad Sukri's own village, Sinargalih, refused to accept his body for burial -- a powerful communal rejection that spoke louder than any government statement. The bus terminal reopened after repairs. Its toilet, "significantly damaged" in the first blast, was rebuilt. At least four public buses and numerous motorcycles had been destroyed. The physical scars healed fast. But the Kampung Melayu bombing sits within a longer arc of violence in Jakarta -- from the 2002 Bali attacks through the Marriott, the Australian embassy, the Thamrin intersection, and this bus terminal -- each one answered by the same stubborn insistence from ordinary Indonesians that terror will not reshape their daily lives.