#does he understand what sort of shit yuki went through??? does he fully appreciate the EXTENT of it???

[the-sage-libriomancer]

can't stop thinking about Ayame. he's such an outlier to the zodiacs in so many ways:

-the only (adult) zodiac member not living on Sohma grounds.

-the only zodiac member who genuinely likes themselves and actively practices self-love.

-the only zodiac member with a sibling in the zodiac.

-the only zodiac member Akito hasn't harmed either mentally or physically (because she can't stand him lmao).

all of it makes him feel weirdly isolated from the Sohma family's trauma and the story as a whole. he isn't under the Sohmas' thumb. he isn't bogged down by hatred or self-loathing. he's never experienced Akito's wrath the way the other zodiac members have.

and it's fascinating to think about how he must've had a completely different experience from the other zodiacs. when he was growing up, Akito hadn't hurt any of them - Shigure and Kureno both had immunity, Hatori never caused problems, and the rest of them were too young or too obedient. Ayame never hated himself, nor did he ever find himself alone and friendless. he moved far away from the Sohmas, started his own business to make his own money, and hasn't had them breathing down his neck in years. he has, for all intents and purposes, escaped the Sohma family and its mountains of trauma completely unscathed.

and you know. i wonder if that's something else Yuki hates about Ayame. that all of the zodiacs have a horror story about Akito - that Rin got thrown out a window and Hatori lost an eye and even little Kisa was beaten half to death, that Yuki himself had to endure years of intense isolation, psychotic episodes, and literal fucking torture at the hands of Akito -

and Ayame never got hurt.

not even once.

[getoffthesoapbox]

Hello dear I want to ask you something about Yuki. I think you do really great analysis! I read somewhere about Yuki and her guilt complex and I've always feel like she feels guilty over kaname and his shit, but not over Zero and her awful deeds she put him through. I never see how she found herself undeserving his love, it always was just like "oh Zero, I'm sorry but I can't so let's wait another decade"! It's disgusting. And Zero OK with it? It's too unrealistic for me

Hello right back at you, my friend! I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed my analyses! Thank you for reading them! 

I agree with you that as things currently stand right now (especially with the reader having been firmly shut out of Yuuki’s head since Night 88), it’s hard to understand Zero and Yuuki and whatever their “it’s complicated” relationship is right now.

Right now it’s clear Yuuki isn’t pulling her weight and Zero’s doing all the heavy lifting. However, Zero seems to be in no rush and at ease with the situation, which makes it difficult to determine what, exactly, is the hold up. Now, to be fair, Zero does seem to regress by the time we get through the 36 black box years between VKM 3 and VKM 1′s scene with Yori——he’s back to being bitter about Kaname. 

Unfortunately we’re suffering a bit from the fact that Hino didn’t know she’d have a full series to flesh out when she wrote the initial special chapters that make up the first volume of VKM. These chapters are predominantly pandering to please fans and aren’t necessarily good indicators of what’s really going on behind the scenes in Yuuki’s and Zero’s relationship.

That being said, I do think we’re starting to see subtle signs that Yuuki has a lot of guilt toward Zero. I like to call the focus on Kaname the “red herring” to the real problems that lay between Zeki. Kaname is the lowest hanging fruit of the many, many issues they have yet to work out. 

Zero’s also not helping the situation by enabling Yuuki. =P (We’ll just set him aside for now.)

Before I dig into VKM’s evidence that Yuuki feels a deeply entrenched guilt toward Zero about everything that happened in VK, I want to go back to VK itself and just highlight a couple scenes that get overlooked because Kaname’s a drama queen and steals the show in the latter half of volume 19. 

When Yuuki takes Zero’s memories, she apologizes and cries. After she confirms that Zero is stable in Night 89, she has an exchange with Kaito where he basically calls her the scum of the earth. She smiles, implying that she agrees with Kaito’s assessment. So we know for a fact that Yuuki post-Night 88 feels she is scum because of what she did to Zero. We also know from Nights 79 and 89 that Yuuki feels responsible for all of Kaname’s actions since the initial Rido incident, which means she feels personally responsible for Zero’s family’s murders and Zero’s pain. These things carry into all her actions for the rest of VK and into VKM. She reaffirms this later when she blasts Kaname when he confesses in Night 89 to regretting that he didn’t dump her onto Zero sooner (before she got to Zero’s memories) after he had Isaya turn her. Yuuki thinks both she and Kaname are scum for what they’ve both done to Zero.

You can see this further justified in Night 90. When Zero arrives, Yuuki huddles in her covers and doesn’t want to greet him, which is a classic sign of guilt. She reaffirms this after Kaname parades her in front of memoryless Zero, reminding Kaname that they have no right to even show their faces in front of him. This implies two things: 1.) she thinks both she and Kaname have messed with Zero’s life like the arrogant Purebloods they are and b.) that both of them have betrayed Zero so egregiously that they’re not even worthy of his presence. (This also implies Yuuki feels guilty for sleeping with Kaname, but that’s neither here nor there.)

After all this, Zero manages to get his memories back and then tries to save Kaname for Yuuki. If you think this girl didn’t feel she was unworthy before this, imagine how much worse she feels after this. After all she did for Zero, he still tried to save the man who ruined his life for her, even after all she herself put him through. Pretty huge stuff. Zero was already a saint in her eyes (see her response to Night 90), but his actions in Night 92-93 would basically paralyze her because she views herself as so far “beneath” him. 

That’s where we land at the end of the original series. VKM picks up where we left off, and so far here are the hints we’ve gotten that Yuuki’s actually not all that comfortable with Zero’s sudden full acceptance of everything awful she’s ever done:

She runs off on him immediately after he assures her that her having Kaname’s child doesn’t change his wish for them. Yori hints in VKM 1 that the reason Yuuki did this was because Zero’s kindness is difficult to understand (meaning Yuuki feels Zero should be angry at her/resent her, and the fact that he isn’t makes her feel even more guilty toward him).

Yuuki apologizes to him twice in VKM 3′s bench scene about not being able to have a child with him yet. She wouldn’t do this if she didn’t feel guilty toward him about it. 

Yuuki gets upset on his behalf in VKM 5 for being so loving and affectionate toward her when she isn’t ready to fully respond to him. She tries to let him know he’s free to leave her (which is a subtle implication that she may actually be afraid his feelings for her aren’t real——see Night 86 and Zero’s question about their feelings being manipulated; this may still be playing in to Yuuki’s fears about Zero eventually feeling “trapped” with her).

Also in VKM 5, Yuuki admits to peeking at the first pages of Zero and Ai’s exchange diary and being touched by Zero’s thoughts about Ai’s birth. This implies two things: 1.) that Yuuki and Zero have never actually discussed how Zero feels about Ai (this implies Yuuki is afraid of Zero’s true feelings about some of the not-so-pro-Zero things she’s done) and 2.) that Yuuki has been afraid that Zero all along resents Ai and is relieved to have found out he doesn’t. Both of these imply that, whatever her feelings for Ai and Kaname, she feels guilt toward Zero about Ai and Kaname.

Yuuki flips out at Ai when Ai merely offers an innocent question about whether Zero is staying away because he’s angry at Yuuki for still holding on to Kaname. This is not a natural response for a woman who’s just slowly moving on from a previous relationship, and it implies that Yuuki has a lot of emotions where Zero’s feelings about her feelings for Kaname are concerned. Obviously we’ll eventually find out more about this in future chapters.

Yuuki appears to deeply appreciate the role Zero played in “saving” her from the darkness Kaname’s semi-suicide put her in. She appreciates him standing by her side. She also seems disturbed in the flashback that Zero would consider making huge sacrifices that go against his own principles in order to bring Kaname back for her.

This is where we’ve sort of left off in VKM. As you can see, there’s a lot of subtle evidence that’s beginning to stack in favor of Yuuki having a deeply entrenched guilt complex toward Zero. She thought she treated him like scum, he’s never once reproached her for that, and he’s been nothing but an angel to her ever since. She likely feels completely unworthy of him. 

The reason Hino is focusing on Yuuki’s guilt toward Kaname right now is because Yuuki committed another deeply entrenched crime in Kaname’s case——she could never give him her heart. She drove Kaname to suicide because she couldn’t love him romantically the way he wanted. Yuuki’s got to deal with her Kaname issues first before she can then work with Zero to overcome the deep inferiority complex she now has toward the man who has literally saved her over and over again, and continues to wait patiently by her side. 

(Not only the above issues, but Yuuki also has several other issues that are potentially still active in her relationship with Zero. One is her fear that he really just loves the human Yuuki and that the vampire Yuuki has never been his preferred choice. The other is that his feelings may or may not be real, that they may be manipulated, and that perhaps one day she will drive him into a corner from which he cannot escape much like Kaname did to her. These are other factors that play into Yuuki keeping Zero at arms’ length that I believe will begin to surface once the Kaname tip of the iceberg has been dealt with.)

I went off on a bit of a ramble, but I hope this helps a bit. =) I do think Hino will address all of this by the time VKM is over, but for now we all have no choice but to hold our frustration at bay and bide our time. =)