Sacchin.EXE story. Just for fun for you all to read! Happy Hallo-eventh of November

3 am.  The hour on the clock doesn’t surprise me, and neither does the sound that fills my headphones.  An invitingly cold, ethereal melody blends beautifully with the pale night sky projecting out from the monitor and smattering my blacked out walls.  In a coffee riddled, depression-propelled haze, I had opened up Tsukihime.

I knew what I was about to read.  I could recite it from memory if I put even an ounce of effort into it.  A stock photo ripped straight from some catalogue for the city of Tokyo with a shitty orange filter to simulate the time of day young boys and girls walk home from highschool.  Sickly nostalgia plays it’s opening notes, as Tohno Shiki has a conversation with Yumizuka Satsuki.  Is it right to say that this is their first real talk if I’ve read it countless times?  Useless thoughts prick the back of my head.  Sacchin starts telling the story of her fateful first encounter.  When a precocious Shiki opened up the badminton club room and helped her out, told her to eat something warm, and went on his merry way.  Dan Salvato may say that’s a weak character motivation, and yeah that’s the point dipshit.  It’s a small thing, and to an adult brain it seems like an irrational reason for her to have an attraction towards Shiki; but that’s just it.  It‘s irrational because that’s all she has left to cling to.  That sentiment of ‘love’ only popped up because she went out into the town to repay Shiki.  It’s never described where she heard the rumor that A Tohno Shiki was out in the town during the witching hours, but it really doesn’t matter.  She’s just a kindhearted person who wanted to repay him.  Nothing more.  Which is an act that lost her everything.  Literally.  Of course she’d cling to him after that.  I suppose I’m ultimately yelling at the void.  After all, nothing I could do is going to change opinions, nore do I want to.  All I can do is read the same 3 scenes in Tsukihime over and over again.  A useless task that helps only me.  Help isn’t the right word.  Prolonging the inevitable seems more apt.  What a wonderful, productive person I am.  “Mental health day’s?”  yeah sure.  Keep telling yourself that.  Then tell the few people who expect anything of you how sorry you are that you botched it again because you still cling to this petty escapism.  My eyes sting with contempt.  Tears of pity, sadness, angui- tears of something well up.  Dressing it up in overly edgy prose isn’t important.  Having this bittersweet self inflammatory weeping session is.  Sooner I do that sooner I can stop being worthless.  They’re RIGHT there just let them fall down and get a move on.  Or would you rather keep this pathetic act up, me?

…

Sacchin waves goodbye to Shiki.  Her house is that way after all.  The text stares me in my sleepless eyes and I stare back.  Shiki looks at this all as a weird happenstance that he wants to partake in again.  He’s taken a shine to Yumizuka, and who can blame him?  She’s cute, and her melancholic tone can’t hide all that charm she’s got.  He’s cautious, but all around chipper that this all happened.  Me though.  I have the benefit of hindsight.  I know that from this point on she’s either walking to what might as well be her death, or Shiki will wind up sending her down the river in a sexed-crazed murder high.  Well that, or in a sentimental sendoff because of Akiha.  Yumizuka fading away because if Shiki lets her drain his blood he’ll become her thrall and lose free will.  He can’t be a good big brother like that.  So he only has the one option.

“Well my house is this way, bye bye.”  What a funny phrase.  The next time those words are spoken it’ll be in a pathetic attempt to recall a good moment before Sacchin withers away from the toes up.  Knowing every single second brings her closer to death.   But hey that’s life.  Sometimes you win, and other times you end up on the ground.  Cast into the bin like a bad first draft in a VN where 2 routes are literally just that.  Ignored by an author with a cold who’d rather write a barely coherent sequel.  Killed by the person you tried so hard to help.  Murdered on the bed of your own passions which you made your only respite.  Was she misguided?  Sure by all means, but that could’ve been course corrected.  Bad things she did, but bad things were done to her so can you really blame her?  Oh but that’s just a one sided coping mechanism that looks favorably on the one who makes it.  It wouldn’t work in practice.  Yet for some reason I keep doing it.  Holed up in my room making things, constantly feeling like I did something wrong that I can’t remember.  Passion following never results in anything substantial in the long term, and on the off chance it does, everything I do is way too eclectic.  I know what I do is cringy and lame at times, but It’s the only thing that makes me feel something.  How wonderful.  I’ll be trapped in this room slowly starving myself to death until I burn out.  Fuck, I guess all you can really do is smile through the pain and take it right?  Just sit there and have 10 gallons of fuck rammed up your own ass.   I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it.  Fuck.  Fuck life.  Fuck reading any of this.

I snap my finger to the control key.  And blindly skip everything.  Stopping only when the game forces me to pick a choice.  I don’t bother looking at any of them, pick blindly, and barrel headlong for Sacchin death.  Silently muttering obscenities directed towards myself along the oh so merry path.  I wanna play out these actions on my screen again and again.  A repeating rut to carve my brain into an overdrived state so that I might finally get up from this chair and fucking do something.  Sacchin may pass on in a one big cope to herself here, but hey, she gives Shiki hope.  He can be a stronger person because of her.  Which is a beautiful sentiment.  One I just wanna live by and make the epitome of my being.  I breathe in the stagnant scent of water flowing from a fountain top, feel the chill rustling the nearby trees, and take in the sight of a former classmate with uncomfortably red eyes that look more sad than ravenous; as I utterly absorb myself in reading the prelude to Sacchin’s Eulogy.

A crucial scene flag appears before me.  One that should be vital, and is to me, but doesn’t actually change anything.  Regardless, I choose “I like you” without missing a beat.  I think it’s the most logical given how Shiki talks about Satsuki, more than that, and even more silly of a reason on my part, I think that even if they’re words that hurt her a bit, she needs to hear them to heal any significant amount.  Which she never has the opportunity to do does she?  Still, her reaction to Shiki saying that is the more important part because she immediately starts deriding herself.   She only gave into her vampiric impulse so that she could make Shiki, who should be screaming “ahh vampire scawwy!!!” Care for her in her broken state.  She’s a very common sense type of person.  She tries to be anyhow.  Most of the time she’s stumbling horribly, just managing to make it out okay.  Works for being a quirky cute class idol who, despite that being her title, no one seems to be worried about.  Though it doesn’t really work outside of those light concepts.  It’s a habit she really needs to break.  She didn’t account for Shiki being an already weird person who would like her despite all her new proclivities.  She wants to be “more like him.” but only in the sense of having the power to protect and acquire what she loves.  If he already likes her though, what was it all for?  Sure it’s pleasant to hear, but that doesn’t matter if it’s instantly caked under layers of self contempt for going about it all wrong and actually killing people.  She can’t justify that to herself if the foundation she decided to build for her “I’ll become different from a human so that I can love and protect, even at the cost of bystanders” house, is proven flimsy.  So she doubles down.  Satsuki isn’t thinking here.  Her emotions are a mess, and she’s terrified of going about things in a manner that isn’t an insipid tangle of brute forcing her way to where she wants to be.

I took another sip of coffee, my thumb now rapping the spacebar as quick as I could scan the text, and just kept reading.  They fought a little, Satsuki got a nibble, and they ended up in the  back alley.  The repeated lines and events had a creature comfort of sorts.  They let me enter a daze of just coasting mentally with something that, though was a tad depressing in the outcome, was familiar.  Like a childhood bedroom with no windows.  A picture of a pleasant memory.  A night spent utterly alone but with a cozy blanket.  Things that are inviting at the outset, but a little cold.  Oh Sacchin.  She has some comfort at the end, but ultimately still does pass on.  Still.  If she just thought a little more, and rationalized it out, she probably could’ve been okay, and even lived happily despite her vampirism.  She was really, really close actually.  Just one more push and she might’ve made it.

Right as I was about to calm myself into being productive, my thought process was shattered by the game taking a sharp left turn.  I got the CG for Satsuki drinking Shiki’s blood that normally appears in the Akiha route, but right before Shiki would remember Akiha worrying about him at home, which compels him to stab Yumizuka.  I was given a choice.

1. I can’t go through with this
2. I made a promise.  I have to keep it.

I  hit myself hard across the right cheek.

No, still sane.  This is real.  Oh my...  I presumed that the first choice would put me onto the Akiha route.  BORING.  Still, ring in your hopes, me.  This is probably nothing as subarashiki as the actual Satsuki route.  No, unless something pants shittingly idiodic like the ghost of Sacchin, who is real and was trapped in the plushie I procured a few days back, transmigrated into my hard drive; that wasn’t even a possibility.  Buuut even if it was just a quick bad end.  It’s Satsuki related.  I gotta.

Eagerly clicking the only real choice, I jumped a bit at the sight that followed.  The image on screen changed into a completely garbled mess of visual noise.  It was like someone took all the CG’s in Tsukihime, put them into a blender, ate it (i’d do so willingly with the promise of Akiha toes), then vomited that up, tried to eat it again, before giving up after realizing no anime feet were worth that.  Well great! The game crashed.  Fuck, to be expected I guess.  The choice presented was like an oasis to my battered mind.  I think my constantly reused save file finally resulted in this mess.  I knew Tsuki was old, but I didn’t think something like this was possible.  Well actually… Is it a crash?  I kept clicking, and there seemed to be text progressing.  It was nigh impossible to read due to the sheer visual vomit, but something was clearly happening.  I think the image was changing a bit each time I clicked too.  Was the game attempting to grab a CG that didn’t exist in the files anymore?  Only thing I could think of.  If I had to guess, it’d be one that involves Satsuki finishing what she started.  Like it just pulled from random CG’s to make an image.  I could make out just enough text to tell that Shiki called Satsuki “satsuki” instead of Yumizuka.  Not in his head, but to her face.  That, and Shiki feeling ‘cold warmth’.  I don’t know.  I can’t really make anything out on account of the screen not darkening to make the text actually readable.  Instead, progression only made the VN conjure up more abominations as it tried it’s damndest to make a coherent image.  I think it kinda is actually.  I can’t make out much, and I know I’m the type of person to look at TV static and see deers jumping, but it looked like 2 figures.  One on top straddling the other.  Right as I thinking that, my brain, seemingly satisfied with that conclusion, switched rails on my train of thought.

I didn’t even know it was possible to glitch a Visual Novel.  Much less a primitive one with stupidly basic coding(probably).  Tsukihime any% just got a little more viable outside of holding the ctrl button.  Granted, I had no clue what I did to trigger this turn of events, but I did it!  That’s what matters.  I mean thinking about it rationally, I suppose this all makes sense.  A VN is still a game after all, but still, a glitch in these types of games is usually just sound effects playing over and over again.  Which goes from comically unfitting to annoying pretty quickly.  Hell, that’s a quirk of this very VN if ctrl is held for, like, 3 scenes.  Oh god, I’m glad the audio didn’t go like the visuals.  Tsukihime was usually too silent for my liking, but seeing this utter mess of a ‘cg’ made me happy about that for once.   Visuals alone aren’t bad.  Audio alone isn’t bad.  But combine both and a hellish format called ‘jumpscares’ is formed.  It’s not fair to say that that’s always the end result I guess.  It can also cause true horror, like that earthbound inspired indie rpg I was playing a few weeks back.  That had comparable visuals to whatever was on screen right now.  Speaking of which, it’s clear that I’m making progress of some kind.  However, that ctrl key is looking mighty fine right now…

“Satsuki got off me, shaking a bit, before helping me up.  Seeing her jittering like that had me worried for a brief second, but then I saw her smiling… yeah.  This was the right choice.”

The screen turned to black, and the text was once again legible.  Shiki’s monologue greeted me warmly.

I had some meek curiosity about what would happen when I got on this path, but now the game had my hopes in an oddly pleasing vice grip.  That one line was so magical to read.  I can’t even properly convey it in words.  I attempted to use the scroll wheel function to see what I had missed in the scene, but it wouldn’t budge.  An occasional quirk of the VN which I always detested.  All I had were the few trace words I could make out, and that Shiki had given himself to Satsuki.  I wonder what they talked about.  Was it another nostalgic memory they had together?  How hard it was to be alone for Satsuki the past few days?  Or maybe it was something mundane like Shiki asking her to “be gentle.”, or explain the quirks of vampirism.  All I can do is speculate.  I’d assume it was largely Shiki talking more about his reasoning, but that couldn’t be because his explanation of such was currently on screen.  Said thought process of his, is actually more solid than I’d ever expect from what seems to be a half implemented bad ending in Tsukihime.  Tsukihime.  The VN I’ve made fun of in the past for having pathetically shallow bad ends where they’re the exact same text verbatim as the normal read through except wowy zowy Shiki slips and dies!  How unfortunate~

Yet this, an ending which I had to break my way into via an inreplical method produced in a depression-caffeine infused fever pitch, had so much as an entirely unique train of thought that didn’t end immediately with Shiki’s death.  Not to mention, what I think was supposed to be its own CG which seemed to have been implemented at some point in development.

A question.

Just one simple question pops into my head.

Why was this cut?

“I’m not giving up on Satsuki.  I can’t understand her right now, so I have to become like her.  I did become like her...  I just have to figure out the rest now!  If I can save her, I can probably save myself from this too.  Even if not, I made a promise.  Someone very close to me once told me not to take such things lightly, so for her sake and Satsuki’s I should do at least this much.  Ahhhh Akiha won’t be happy with this…. “

Shiki had been resolute in his desire.  He wanted to help sweet Sacchin.  It was sweet seeing his attempts to put all of his scattered thoughts into words.  He says that he was surprised that it wasn’t as bad as he was thinking, and how they’re in this together now.  Just really wholesome stuff befitting of the situation they’re in.  Makes me just wanna say “my MC”  and pray for this to be a happy ending.  Hell if I stopped here it probably would be.  Though, that’s lame.  Gotta go all or nothing baby.  Shiki starts getting kinda tired after the air gets a little silent save for Satsuki muffled sobs of joy over knowing she won’t be alone anymore.  It’s… It’s really endearing.  I know it’s not real, but damn it if i’m not tearing up a bit at it.  Ahhhh I wish that I could actually cry for myself.  This is such a simple thing to get emotional over, but it’s just so cute.  Having emotions reaffirmed like that.  I need it.  There’s a comfort in reading about characters that have that happen to them.  I can’t even count the amount of times headpats have made me cry, and Shiki doing the same to sweet Sacchin here was no exception.  The two seem to like and think about each other a fair bit; but it’s moments like this where I realize that they really don’t have much to talk about when put on the spot.  It's a little awkward, but they’re the type to speak with their actions rather than their words.  With what little they do talk about, where to stay during the day and the like, Shiki starts slurring his speech.  Even his thought patterns reflect this.  It’s like when he had anemia attacks.  Something I didn’t think vampires could do because of blood(lack of it), but alright.  Soon enough, his consciousness starts flickering.

Before he collapses, he describes Satuski’s face as suddenly changing from teary joy to full of guilt-trodden horror before she runs off.  Like she just realized she did something absolutely awful.  The kinda face he’d prefer to see on the way to school, when she says she forgot to do her homework.  In this situation though, it probably means something really bad.  He keeps his hopes up, praying that it wasn’t connected to anything important, before he realizes the painful truth of what’s now happening to him.

He should’ve passed out, but he doesn’t.  His vision powered off, and his body falls like a puppet with its strings cut, but he still feels.

“Kill me.  Kill me.  Kill me.Kill me.  Kill me.  Kill me.killmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillme-

Pain assaults me from every facet of my body.  All my limbs become lead and there’s a murky sludge in my throat that prevents me from breathing let alone screaming.  I wanna scream.  I NEED to scream.  But the mud has firmly lodged itself.  Refusing to budge.  I’m drowning in it.  My lungs are searing from the desire to take in air but all that fills them is the muck.  Which slowly spreads like solidified smoke deeper into my lungs until breathing becomes a forign concept.

Cut it.  Cut it.  Cut it.  Cut it.  Cut it.  I don’t care if my eyes can’t cut the lines, I will GET THIS OUT.

My head splits open, letting in a cloud of miasma.  A sickness that peruses my brain like a bookshelf, leaving little plagues everywhere it finds something valuable to me.

My memories with Akiha turn into memories where she rejects me and I lash out violently at her in ways a brother and sister shouldn’t.  My memories of the two girls at the mansion turn into ones where they switch places and keep blaming me for something I don’t know about until I force them to stop by biting into their annoying throats.  I hate this.  Even more recent encounters like my conversation with Ciel earlier turn into her trying to kill me, but my mind screams at me that “you know how to shut that woman up” and I act on impulse.  These are all things I, as Tohno Shiki, would never do.  That’s a lie.  Why would I be thinking about it and feel this pleased about it?  That doesn’t make sense.  But it does?  I don’t know what’s going on.  Everything hurts.  But this all started in the throat, so I should start there.

I start clawing violently at the black blood that spreads from my esophagus.

My heart begins spasming at the loss of my lungs.  The mud begins seeping out of the organ and towards my heart.  I feel it.  Slowly crawling.  Like thousands of millipedes through the veins, through the nervous system, through any passageway they see fit.  They don’t bother shrinking, they force my body to acclimate to them.  As they keep slowly crawling, biting, and forcing themselves throughout my being.

It hurts.  It hUrTS!

I keep scratching, but I can’t get it out.  GIGIGIGIGGIGIGIKGIGKGIGKGIGKGIGKGI 

I feel it.  Every vein in my body is attempting to pump this poison.  From my violently convulsing heart, the mud has spread.  My blood vessels become sore and engorged, failing their functions.  Systematically my organs begin shutting down as the mud floods them full of puss.  Blood becomes the consistency of toothpaste. My heart, the epicenter of this spread, has stopped beating.  It’s long been lodged deep in muck.

*Scratch scratch scratch scratch*

As the infection gets to my eyes, my vision flickers back on.  I stop tearing at my neck and look at my fingers, now caked in a pitch black paste of viscara and thickened blood.  This isn’t getting me anywhere.

…

Ah, I tried to speak, it seems that I’ve gone and torn out my own esophagus.

I feel around for my knife to no avail.

I should be dead.  I should BE DEAD.  Yet I still feel every single agonizing second.  If the pain doesn’t kill me, the knowledge that this body will eventually do the things I envision should.

I’m riddled in dark lines.  Lines that were… slowly fading.  It’s not that I’m passing out, they’re just going away…

It’s cold.  The October air chills my limbs.  I want to bite something.

My vision darkens.  The transformation slows down as the mud soaked millipedes have completely enraptured my insides.  I can finally breathe a little.  My throat feels a little dry.

I want to drink something warm.

I just feel…

So cold.”

Shiki finally blacks out.  Uh one word after reading all that.  Fuck.  Just fuck.  There’s a brief collection of ellipses before he wakes up and describes a sudden warm and pleasant sensation against his lips.  A type of euphoria that enters his mouth, goes to his stomach and brings life to his frozen corpse.  He quickly becomes infatuated with it.  When the sensation stops he cries out like a child fresh off the teet.  When it comes back he starts tearing up at how good it feels.   He regains a bit of limb control and realizes that his neck is completely fine now.  Just as well the stoppage in his arteries ceases as they spring back to life.  Seemingly joyous of the new supply that flows through them.  The more of this warmth he drinks, the more normal he feels.  No.  better than normal.  He feels as able bodied as if he’d been a triathlete without a crippling chest injury.   Tohno Shiki has become just like Satsuki.  He hasn’t put it together at this point, instead choosing to think about how he was like a car that needed an oil change, but I sure as hell have.  The boy's life has changed for however long this ending will continue.

One thing is clear immediately.  Satsuki is kissing him while spitting something warm down his throat and using her tongue to force him to drink it in such a manner that makes it obvious that she’s doing this for more than just necessity.  When he’s finally come too, she breaks the kiss, and backs up.

There’s no sprite on screen, classic Tsukihime move, but the VN describes her having a red streak around her mouth, and the dissipating body in the alleyway makes the gears in Shiki’s head finally shift into a place somewhere between Tohno and Nanaya.  Regardless of if he wanted to or not, he just drank blood, and it felt GOOD.  Part of feels disgusted at himself, recalling the memory of his vivid visions of biting into his sister's neck, but another part; a much louder part, doesn’t care about such small things.  He feels reeeeeaaaal good right now, and just as his body reacted to those invasive impulses earlier, he does just the same here.

He’s blood drunk, essentially.  Bit by bit, he starts to get an understanding of Satsuki’s headspace.  It was fucking hell to go through what they did, and yeah, they really aren’t human now are they?  He wants to give into that voice telling him to view humans as cattle, but recalls the only reason he’s like this in the first place.  Satsuki.  Shiki sees Sacchin, lips covered in blood, and sees what he describes as “the most provocative sight in his life.”

Tsukihime is a funny VN.  Call it reading it time and time again, but it is really obvious where the eroge is gonna be.  Like, really obvious.  The reasoning for the one that appears here is even as silly as most of the others in Tsuki.  Shiki turns his vampiric impulses into sexual ones, and wants to immediately court his adorable, lovable classmate Satsuki Yumizuka.  God, Shiki really is the most relatable Type-Moon Protag isn’t he?

Yumizuka has some initial awkwardness towards kissing him, Shiki describes her as cutely fidgeting with her hands wondering what to do, but she slowly warms up and gets more comfortable with him.  The way she sees it, they’re essentially lovers now.  All they have is each other, and if there’s no way to keep their bodies warm, they just have to stay close, or something like that.  She rationalizes it out like that, but then says that “That’s what she’s been told to say in situations like this.  Really she’s just as horny as him. “

It’s kinda cute seeing them both be so upfront.  Tsukihime is always really fast with relationships, but honestly, I think that’s reasonable.  Nasu originally wanted each route to take place over a month, which is a horrible decision.  Thank you for fixing that, Takeuchi.  But the point is that the decision to cut the day’s down to 11’ish for each route means each relationship grows super fast.  It’s only so noticeable here because Satsuki and Shiki have spoken seriously to each other twice.  They were good talks sure, but to already be on the level of sex.  I can’t say that I don’t get it though.  Intense situations make people grow and rely on each other out of necessity.  In that case, these two have ONLY relied on each other.  If I had a prediction, that’s gonna be what fucks them over in the end.  Probably.  I hope I’m wrong and that this is a happy ending though.  Would be nice for Sacchin to get something…

Right as I was about to get on a mental soap box of Sacchin simping antics, my vision was filled with depressing vomit.

The screen again tried to grab CG’s that don’t exist.  It’s a shame honestly.  Tsukihime isn’t exactly known for it’s H-scenes quality, so it’s not like I wanted it for erotic purposes.  But still, laughing at the prose would’ve been funny.  Though I guess that might’ve ruined the sweet tone, so I guess this glitchy fade to black isn’t the worst.  Still, at least this amalgamation of images was a bit more visually appealing than the last one.  This one was a weird hodgepodge of eroge CG’s put together in such a peculiar way as to strategically censor any possible sex act.  Stuff was crazy, I couldn't believe how perfect it was.  Not only was this bad ending something so suited to all my fucked up sensibilities, but it was something I could show the whole family too!  Not that I’d ever do that... again.  Lord knows what happened when I described the Akiha route to my mom, NEVER AGAIN thank you kindly.  God.  Wherever this ending goes may it continue to be this immaculate.  Gonna just visualize the CG’s of Sacchin sex included in the plus disc and hit ctrl till I get to something legible again.

...

May it have been the grimest, sweetest affair in Tsukihime.

Maybe this was locked up behind glitched code because it has elements of the Satsuki route?  Like, it references it or borrows plot elements or something?  I can’t explain why something with this level of effort was cut.  I mean, legit everyone knew Satsuki was supposed to be a heroine.  It wouldn’t have hurt to keep this unless it taps into plot elements that the route did.  I don’t think this is anything more than the level of “Dark kiss moon”  which is another Sacchin end in the VN already.  Soon enough, the scene ended though, and I was immediately greeted with a title card I hadn’t seen before.  It was the abandoned warehouse bg seen in the plus disc, and the day was called simply “empty”

“I hate myself.  All I wanted was to be held and comforted but...  Shiki… Suffered because of me. “

The lead was now Yumizuka Satsuki.

I struck myself across the left cheek this time.

Yeah, this is still real.  Fuck.  This is cool!

They apparently found their way to the shed area in the remainder of the night, presumably by walking, but idk maybe their fucking just got REAL wild.  Being as they were now nocturnal, the warehouse had the late evening filter on it.  Presumably they fell asleep when the sun was rising and only just woke up now.  A fact, which makes me realize that I really am just becoming Satsuki Yumizuka.  I can’t remember the last time I saw a sunrise that didn’t have me trying to blackout my curtains more for fear of the sun.  Speaking of, Satsuki was looking down at Shiki who was resting on some probably not comfortable cardboard boxes.  I’d wonder how he wasn’t freezing to death, but I don’t think vampires can do that.

Satsuki’s mind is racing.  Both on the happiness she feels, and the guilt.  Girls happy to finally have someone, but fuck, she can’t deny what she made him go through.  Dying would be more comforting.  She was a wreck thinking that he’d hate her.  But that was secondary to her real issue.  Which, I honestly don’t know what that could be because she refuses to address it.  She seemed dead set on pushing down a certain train of thought concerning Shiki.  Constantly looking at his sleeping face, which looked dead and hell I guess kinda is now, and kept muttering to herself “don’t think about it.”

Shiki eventually started arising from the pile of boxes, stretching his back from the strain of sleeping on something only slightly softer than concrete, as he looked at Satsuki and came to his senses.

“ Shiki looked at me, his cute face now a little paler than before, but nothing his anemia never did on occasion.  I could almost believe that I hadn’t fucked up his life irreparably.  Those red eyes that looked at me sharply.  I couldn’t sense the murderous intent that scared me last night, but I did feel something else.  Were they accusing me?  Or looking at me with pity?  I didn’t know, and I was too afraid to ask.  His eyes didn’t used to be like that.  It’s kinda sad to think that I'd never get to see them again.”

Satsuki has enough mental power to bid him a merry good morning despite her cloudy thoughts, and Shiki finally gets up with a fitting reply that feels far more genuine.  He looks around a bit, taking things in and seemingly getting a hold of what, where, and how he is.  He seems a bit out of sorts by the whole chain of events, but breathes in and out deeply, accepts things, and asks Satsuki how she’s doing.

Sacchin smiles and responds with a vague “I’m alright.”  meanwhile howling with laughter at herself on the inside.   She’s doing fucking horribly I take it.   I mean usually people are when they respond like that, and Sacchin seems knee-deep in some “fucking horribly”.

More important than herself though, she asks about Shiki’s wellbeing.

“I was spooked by the ordeal, but I’m way better now.  Don’t you worry Satsuki!”\

Wow you don’t really see it when you’re in his head but fuck if he isn’t a tad 1 dimensional in his vocabulary here.  Living up to his eroge protag roots.

“Do you hate me?”

“I care about you too much to hate you.”

“Do you love me?”

“It’s a bit soon to be saying that but… yeah I do.”

“I grit my teeth so hard they should probably be breaking, but I make careful note not to show this on my face.  If I keep smiling, things will probably work out, probably.  I can keep this up if I avoid anything that makes the reality too obvious.

..

What am I saying the reality is already clear as day.  You’re a pathetic human being, me.  No wait, not even human.  You’re a loser, and lower than those you see as ‘cattle’.  What a shitty justification.  An easy sidelining of reality that helps only me.  Help isn’t the right word, more like puts off the eventual end point of this sham.

Please.

Don’t let Shiki say anything too obvious.  Stop asking him such silly questions.  I can have this, even if it’s fake right?  I wanna believe it’s real so please brain.  Just shut off.”

I wish this was something more people could read.   This is how I’ve always seen the character, but this more or less confirms those thoughts.  A girl who is barely keeping it together, and sometimes it all spills out in a horrible, pitiable breakdown that people forgive her for, but always haunts her day to day until the next one happens.  Something that’s escalated horribly in the past few days, and is seemingly being capitalized on here.  Regardless of that headspace though, she keeps on trying to make things work.  It’s beautiful.  I really do love her character.  Even if this does spoil whatever Nasu had planned, I would’ve loved to have seen and partaken in conversations about the “mini Sacchin route”  hell, that might’ve drummed up more interest for the route proper to actually have been out by now.  Haah. I can hope for a hypothetical timeline that doesn’t exist all I want; It doesn’t change the facts, and hell, at least I’m here now, and here is pretty alright.

Well, I say that now, but looking back to the screen greets me with an unfortunately similar affair.  I think… I think this might actually be something from the Satsuki route though after seeing it.

Sacchin starts a lengthy explanation about vampires, and how they function to Shiki.  He’s naturally curious, and seeing this from the info havers perspective is something that’s interesting enough to make me wanna read it whole.  But it’s still fundamentally the same knowledge from the Arc/Ciel route that’s brought up in the hotel.  Still though, there’s a lot less certainty to Satsuki’s words.  She’s going a lot more with her instincts, feelings, and experiences which by proxy gives her a lot less “matter of factness” to her intonation.  Adds a good twist.  Wish Nasu would’ve done this in future works instead of having Rin explain magic the same way 3 times in FSN.  Like, I get the need to have information from a positively objective source, but the unreliableness of Satsuki’s words make this way more fun to read.  If this route was read post Arcueid, the reader could confirm or deny Satsuki’s thoughts on vampirism.  Which would serve to keep the reader interested and invested in world building, while those like me who just like character moments get to take in the cute intracatices of Sacchins actions.  She never actually has been out in the sun since she’s drank blood, she just thinks it’d be bad because she’s seen movies like that.  Which, while true, is way more compelling than Arc just telling Shiki that verbatim.  Nasu always cuts the fun stuff.  The scene continues like this for some time until the two eventually decide to go out once night has fallen.

Satsuki just wants to take her mind off things for a bit, and Shiki wants to go up and smooth things over with his sister, while having the submotive of thinking things over and looking for a solution to the mess they’re both in now.  As they walk, the air gets a tad chilly and Satsuki grabs onto Shiki’s arm.  Something she says she’s wanted to do for ages now.  It feels a tad shallow given their circumstances, but it is undeniably cute to see Sacchin indulging in little things like this.  Shiki gets a little bashful, but can’t really decline seeing as what they did the night before.  They start talking to each other and asking simple questions like “what was your favorite place to eat and the like.”  Just small talk really, but after all the heavy stuff, it’s kinda nice to have a moment of reprieve where the two just bond over things like wondering why the most famous restaurant in Misaki city is literally called “restaurant”.

The game just cycles between the various nighttime BG’s as they converse, until landing on the hill they last walked up on together.  This time they don’t part though.  Instead they stop and Satsuki tightens her grip, holding his arm close to her like a cozy pillow, before she changes the subject to what’s been on her mind.

“You know, the last time we were here, I was really, really scared that it’d be the last time I got to do something like this”

“Something like what?”

“Oh silly, talking casually with you.  About little things you know?  It’s… it’s nice.  Thank you for being by my side and...

Don’t say it don’t say it don’t say it.   You know how he’ll respond.

Also, I’m sorry for.. You know what, nevermind.  Let’s just keep walking.

… Coward. ”

I wanna beat up Satsuki’s head voice.  She may be avoiding the subject, but I can’t help but feel for it.  It seems like a damned if you do damned if you don’t senario, and I just want my girl to have an ouuuut.

The two go on to talk about what their life from now on is gonna be and the like.  Shiki jokes about taking up a night shift job to renovate the abandoned warehouse, to which Satsuki refuses.  Saying that she’d do it instead!  He can stay back and do the actual work putting the stuff together, or sneaking things out of his “castle on the hill.”  To which, Shiki replies without missing a beat.  “Fuck that.” Akiha is a tyrant who is probably gonna castrate him for his transgressions as is.

“Is she really scary or something?”

Shiki puts his hand on his chin, thinking a bit, until putting his fist on his other palm like a hammer and gavel.  A gesture Sacchin finds endearing.  “Tsundere…”

“Eh?  Tsun..Dere?  As in the anime thing?”

“Yeah you get it!  I can tell she really does care underneath, but truth be told I was shocked when I saw her a few days back.  She seems like a totally different person than I remember!  But, there’s still that kind Akiha underneath I think.  She’s really grown up.  Still, i’d be lying if I said she can’t be such a -”

Shiki stops his words mid sentence because he noticed something.  Just a little, small, terrifying something.

“No, no, by all means go on Nii-san.”

Speak of the devil and she shall appear.

Akiha was now walking from the other side of the street towards the two.

Satsuki was initially shocked that this was Shiki’s sister, they literally looked nothing alike, but then her mind froze at the sheer presence this person exuded.  It was inhuman, and she felt nothing but malice from everything Akiha did.  The way she walked, the way she talked, and ESPECIALLY her eyes.

Those were not the eyes of curiosity.  Those eyes held more murderous intent than Shiki’s ever could.  SHE had taken Shiki from Akiha.  SHE had changed him irrevocably.  And now, SHE was the only clear reason he couldn’t go back to being the coveted prince.   Satsuki had half convinced herself that Akiha’s hair was turning red too.  This situation was not one for talking things over, Akiha knew already.  Talking right now is only her playing with her food.  She knew this because Akiha smiled when she saw Sacchin squirm in a slowly mounting terror.  She didn’t even hear Shikis attempts to smooth things over in an overly lax, totally unbefitting tone.  Her thoughts just screamed:

“Gonna die gonna die gonna die.  Her hair.  It’s red.  The color of blood.  The color of my insides on concrete.  Gonna die.  I should run.  Escape.  Grab Shiki.  Go.”

Quietly as to get the slip the crimson red vermilion in front of her.  Satsuki picked up Shiki and began running as fast as her overcharged vampire legs could take her.

In the time it took Shiki to ask “what?” They were already at the bottom of the hill.  Akiha wouldn’t risk hurting Shiki, and that was something Satsuki knew based on how Shiki talked about her.  She cared WAY too much about him.  Still, running is necessary.  She didn’t wanna lose any limbs or her life tonight.

She simply ran, and ran, and ran until they got to the school entrance.  Her feet went somewhere familiar, but hopefully Akiha wouldn’t know where they were.

“Busy night?”

Ciel had appeared before them.  Clad in church robes, and asked that simple question.

Before she could catch her breath, answer the question, or ask why Ciel was dressed like that, Satsuki felt a searing pain in her abdomen.

A sword-like shape had found itself lodged in Satsuki’s stomach.  An indescribable burning sensation seared her insides.  Like the blades were coated in holy water.  Like the demons who die to the stuff in the movies, Satsuki used to watch.  The realization that, yeah she kinda was one of those demons now seemed to only hit home now.  She had done her best just to live, but to the average human this is the norm.

“Ah, I missed.  Now listen Yumizuka-chan; you’re my dear classmate so I should probably tell you in advance how clumsy I can be.”

2 of the 5 blades Ciel had left were then shoved into Satsuki’s left thigh and right shoulder.   To which, she screamed, dropped Shiki, and collapsed.  Ciel had taken careful note to not stab Shiki it seems.  Maybe because he’s kinda innocent in all this?  Taking a step back, the events that have transpired should make it clear that Shiki isn’t the reincarnation of Roa this time around.  Maybe Ciel just wants him to go painlessly because he hasn’t really done anything.

“Oh dear.  I did it again.  I hope you use this time to repent for your sins~”

Ciels words had a clear sense of superiority to them.  She had used the shock to her advantage, as Satsuki did with Akiha moments before, and though Satsuki was alive, for how much longer was the question.

Satsuki began to slowly remove the three blades lodged in her body.  Ciel and Shiki began to fight, but call it a creative choice or just pure laziness, the scene was entirely focused on Satsuki’s mild screaming as she tried to accomplish her task.  Her left arm was entirely unharmed, so she used it to remove the blade in her right shoulder first, hoping that her thickened blood would clot the wound.  Regardless of if it actually did or not, she just wanted the burning sensation gone.  Following this, she did the same to the sword in her stomach, and left thigh.  Upon doing so, having the plug to her consciousness pulled.

When she finally came too, she was in a familiar spot.  Well, kinda.  It was the sports shed for their current school.  It still gave a vague sense of welcoming nostalgia regardless however.

Shiki looked at her warmly, clearly a little worse for wear than before, but still in one piece.

“Hey, I see you’re finally up.  Here.”  He gave out his hand.  To which she took and stood up with.

It was a bit all over the place tonight.  But she still has this at least.  This person she can take solace in.  Who loves her unconditionally.  Well, that’s what she keeps telling herself anyhow.  Upon waking up a bit, Satsuki, still feeling a bit in pain and loopy from just waking up, starts to clear her mind.  This is how their life will be every day from now on, and that’d be bearable if she just asks the one thing she’s been avoiding.

“Hey Shiki, I’m sorry I turned you into a vampire.  It was an entirely selfish act, and I deserve to die for it.”

“That’s not true!  I would’ve stopped you if it wasn’t okay, you know?”

“Liar.”

The immediate response creates instant silence, but Satsuki doesn’t feel any guilt about that.  Instead choosing to barrel headlong into her spiraling thought process.

“Hey… Shiki…  If I said that I wanted you to only spend time with me and abandon your sister and everyone else, what would you say?”

“I would.”  It took him a little to answer, but that was all he had to say on the matter.

Satsuki takes a deep breath in and starts chuckling to herself.  This is exactly what she’d expected.  Tohno Shiki would never answer that way, ergo he’s not Tohno Shiki anymore.  Just her mindless thrall who will always affirm and care for her.  But that’s just too hollow.

“YOU’RE ONLY SAYING THAT BECAUSE I WANT YOU TOO.”  She lashes out physically on him.  Slashing his chest with her long nails, pushing him to the ground and straddling him.  She  slams her hands down again and again taking note of how Shiki only responds with “it’s okay, this isn’t your fault” as his organs get ripped out of him.

Tohno Shiki became a pile of disintegrating human pulp on the floor of the shed, as all Yumizuka Satsuki could do was pound the floor where his body once was and cry.

“ha...haha...hahahahahahaha….AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

Eventually, she moves to the shed door, which Shiki seemed to have broken in such a way as to not let anyone out or in.  She places her head against it and hears approaching voices outside

*muffled*  “nii-san?”  Niisan!”  “Tohno-kun!?”

“Shiki… I’m so sorry.”

She lightly places her hands on the broken, unopening door and mutters to herself.

“Help me Shiki.  Like you did before…

*sniff*  It’s so cold…”

Broken, freezing and alone with no one to help her, Satsuki has only one clear fate.  One she curls up on the floor with whatever remains of Tohno Shiki, and accepts.

The screen then faded to black as a “Dead End” screen appeared.  When I clicked once more, the game, seemingly not knowing what to do in the absence of any Ciel sensei lesson, crashed.

I don’t know how to even begin thinking about this, or if I can even ever read it again.  I got a lot more invested in the game near the end, but fuck that ending was not what I needed tonight, cold and alone in my bedroom.  I… I’m going to bed.