Slightly Founded ramblings
Okay so people like it when I have something to say about vampires or at least apply my knowledge from Tsukihime and Project Moon. That's cool! I'm glad one of my favorite characters from tsukihime at least the og IS Satsuki though to be frank most the characters in that game are up there on my favorite scale but I find the particular twist of the knife Tsukihime plays with her to be a horrifying statement on young love. HEAVY Spoilers for the far side route if you haven't read those yet!! As it pertains to the original novel Satsuki is a very sweet girl who clearly has some form of crush on our protagonist Shiki for a long time now despite being a fairly popular person around the school some dim hope is all she clings to romantically. Shiki at no point truly tries to reciprocate this and bluntly he's a bit of an idiot for it as upon learning of your move and how it's on the same path home as her she immediately asks Shiki to walk home with her as far as her path goes, you do obviously. All that is good in the world in the transient moment before we know anything about Shiki comes from Satsuki as the sun sets on the beginning of the vn and she tells us a short story of Shiki's heroism. How he saved her from a seemingly impossible situation of being stuck with the rest of the team in a sport equipment shed with effortless moves though in truth being because he sliced the door open with the mytic eyes of death perception to her registers as nothing short of a miracle. Shiki has forgotten this and with reluctance she of course goes "Just as I thought" this is my own read on her emotions as it stands.
An acknowledgement that despite making such a large impact on her she isn't really anything to Shiki just two people who are friends maybe but that largely slide past each other as if nothing is happening at all. An essential part of her character however is a small promise that if she ever were in trouble Shiki would be there to help, keep this in mind as we move forward. In my playthrough of tsukihime I did not reach many bad ends by some miracle but a particular few did stand out to me so allow me to set the scene as the novel so greatly does. One sees Shiki at the school again meeting Yumizuka once more but something seems off? His mind scratches and peels at the edges as it always does in the supernatural world which he has an unfortunate draw for in the lot of life of Shiki Tohno. It's just Satsuki though! So one would think until you begin to recognize certain signs from earlier routes such as if you reach the far side routes you would have the knowledge of enchantment from Arc in near side as Shiki's mind begins to twist looking into Satsuki's eyes as she very explicitly asks a dumbfounded Shiki to go out with her. Additionally her sprite has taken on red eyes one would recognize from encounters with Roa as well, what stands before is you is the girl you know gone horribly wrong but where? how?
She seems to derive an innocent sort of pleasure from Shiki's confusion as his mind crushes itself in a reaction describable only as the "nanaya supernatural danger sense". Conversion to a Dead Apostle is not a guarantee in tsukihime or at least it depends on the lore of remake and og as I recall so don't fault me here if I miss a point or two but most likely you end up as a walking zombie known only as "The Dead" which serve to bring blood back to the dead apostle which made them mindlessly though some of these corpses can become dead apostles it's all a lucky gamble. The uncertainty of Shiki in this death is that of a strange feeling of knowledge he shouldn't know that if he were ever to wake up again he would never know warmth in his sorry existence. The same pain as Satsuki is currently enduring and crumpling under. She can't bear it alone so she thinks to drag the one person she knows will save her into it with her. A large smile on her face all the way as a misinterpreted promise becomes a seal for Shiki's fate. This all comes after the Ciel route after all wherein we saw Shiki go through a great deal of suffering to fight off his own issues with vampirism. A blight that twists both body and mind but has no recourse against the human heart. The final bastion of humanity. This is all but a single bad end let's get into the actual meat here!
Shiki looks for a murderer, the vampire killer known for leaving bloodless bodies. Ring any bells? It's Roa if you've played the nearside routes which to get to far side you have to anyways but Shiki doesn't know this so he searches the city. An important note is that SHIKI/the real Shiki Tohno is more in control and deliberate in these routes and is the only person that could possibly be responsible for Yumizuka whether it be out of malice spiting our Shiki for taking his place or a wrong place wrong time victim discarded like all the other women he seems to go after is a mystery, not to even begin to mention the possibility of him having done profane things to those bodies he killed as SHIKi is known to derive pleasure from cannibalism due to the demon genetics he has even without Roa in his head.
"With those toys" pertains heavily to Kohaku and a couple other topics but I would assume mostly her seeing the relationship they have is of a parallel the one his father had with her of constant sexual abuse. This is how SHIKI sees people. He doesn't. His insanity has driven him to essentially only have eyes for his sister Akiha and her acknowledgement in the same way that when Roa possess his body he seeks only the acknowledgement of Arc with no qualms about defiling every woman he comes across. This is all to say. Yumizuka Satsuki suffered greately. This much is an truth which hardly needs to be spoken. Shiki arives in a back alley and finds littered bodies the work of the vampire? It must be! There isn't any suspect at the scene, Satsuki appears from behind and gently she accuses Shiki himself of being the murderer. A striking accusation but not an unfounded one with all the strange happening of his life and his lifelike dreams of the murders caused by his link to SHIKI. She puts it so softly, plainly even. He was even attacked by a half formed "dead" as soon as he entred the alley making him look even more like the criminal who must've done it.
With a smile she completely dismantles him in those bright school clothes yet the symbol of innocence in the mind of the player. There's something wrong however. She hides her arms strangely, a spot of red.
A true moment of horror which I've come to learn is what Tsukihime employs best at times. A perversion of what you might have previously thought, as I said before vampirism touches both the mind and body. She justifies even murder in the fact it was not a crime of passion or hate, she has no regret and even laughs at the idea that Shiki can't find it in himself to truly think she did it as she's a girl. Her only mistake was that a bit of her own vampiric essence snuck back into one which created the dead which almost got Shiki, someone truly dear to her who she has always been watching since that day with the shed. That is all she has her eyes on, her only fixation still. It is not on the blood of her hands but on Shiki Tohno. The same Shiki Tohno she thinks she can become like a killer. A hero. More than she is and burdened with only a curse. Shiki doesn't understand, he never could! It's a desperate cry which will never be fully understood as she is now something that cannot be allowed to continue existing. Shiki yet continues searching for her finding her again at the park. Options appear. choose wisely!
I recall saying I like her, she bit the living hell out of me.
"It only hurts at first" She wants again, for you to become like her. Help her, Shiki, help her. She moves with intention "not like those failures" She truly wants this for you. Shiki should be like her, be it as retribution for not being there to save her or as a twisted romantic motion of hers she wants you to both be the same. A killer, both the same. The girl we once knew reveals another tidbit here. That she has ALWAYS been watching him. That she never spoke to him due to this, now that she finally has her own horror she feels as if she can speak on equal grounds with him. That hidden edge not even Shiki himself understands that is his true lineage as the last of the Nanaya scared her out of ever talking to him truly.
It keeps Shiki an inhuman being recognized as a killer by all those involved in the supernatural world. Things are not so easy for our poor heroine Satsuki.
Legs skittering backwards, running. Shiki runs away from her even now. Avoids her. He is not one to be predated on. The hidden edge of the Nanaya continues to kick in recognizing the vampire in front of him as his enemy of course, even with all she has done to manipulate the one person she truly desires it isn't enough to stop his fight or flight. These two will never touch again. They will never share a smile with one another again. They are only enemies now, human opposing a vampire trying to eat him alive. That dumb smile now becomes a look of shock used again and again. A reminder of failure. We arrive at the "heart" (pun intended) of my point.
This, line, here. The heart remains. You cannot touch, cannot change, cannot even begin to FATHOM the force behind a human heart. Perhaps it's the undertale I've played before or the other fiction I've consumed surrounding the importance of one's own will as well as the rest of tsukihime that speaks to me so deeply here. She is in pain because she can't do it. She speaks a big talk but really she can't do it, she never asked for this! Yumizuka Satsuki will only ever be in pain as long as she continue to live. There remains a single line for Shiki to cut, her heart. His knife. His mystic eyes which long ago saved her come again to give her a quick egress from life. She has mentioned that it would have been so much easier if she just died. Cried that she doesn't do it because she wants to. She isn't SHIKI. She isn't Roa. She's just a god damn innocent girl who got unlucky enough to survive her encounter. That survival was the worst thing that could've occurred to her as . Carrying this disease is eating her from the inside out.
She dies turnt to ash, at peace. She can finally reminisce on that sunset walk again. A sunset she will never see again. Shiki chooses to survive over giving his life to her as a form of mercy so she doesn't have to continue on this way. For a moment, a heroine is born as she feels truly satisfied in being chosen by Shiki for only an instant. The bite would haunt Shiki for the rest of the route as he fears he himself is suffering her same fate but it is truly just SHIKI fucking around. He feels pain, discomfort, and all sort of sensations from it, Sensations we can only imagine Satsuki must've felt as well, sensations which can't be described by language other than as pain. That is the nature of her fate. A love that never would be and a route that never released.
I end my thoughts and rambling now. I hope this was satisfactory on the whole as I'm no expert, I just enjoy this heavily and write in my spare time. Read the OG tsukihime vn it's awesome!