Random info about Kohaku (and the rping of Kohaku thereof).
OKAY, it's been a hell of a long time since I've essayed, so let's break the streak! |D
[Disclaimer: LOTS of spoilers for Tsukihime for those who still haven't played it or don't want to know what happens.]
So.
I was in living in Japan as an exchange student, December of 2005. I had three characters at cfud, Bob the Angry Flower, and Uotani Arisa and Sohma Yuki from Furuba, I was on a big Fruits Basket kick.
Meanwhile, I managed to meet constant_craver and we made a round of the various shops, restaurants, and Game Centers. Game Centers being like arcades in America, but have the advantage of: 1. GOOD variety of games, and 2. Relative cheap costs. (About 30 cents a pop, 75 cents if you're unlucky. XD)
And, one of the first games pointed out to me was this relatively recent release: Melty Blood. A fighting game based on a hentai game I had heard of but knew nothing about, with about 14 good balanced characters. We played for a bit where I got beat rather badly.
And, one 'character' really stood out to me: a tag-team of two twin maids. One trying very hard to look proper in a western Maid dress (Hisui), and one looking rather cheerful and upbeat (Kohaku). They stood out because I had discussed the possibility of a Fruits Basket based fighting game with constant_craver, and how if Honda Tohru was a character, all of her 'attacks' would have to be using items related to cleaning and cooking, and they'd have to do little to no damage. And, that was basically what summed up the attacks of the two maid sisters. Hisui and Kohaku both fought wielding feather-dusters, cooking instruments, and a broom-stick. (A demonstration of these can be found here. Or just do a search on youtube for "Melty Blood," you'll find lots. XD)
THEN it was that constant_craver let me in on the twist revolving around the maids: "The cheerful one is actually emotionless and sorta-evil. The other quiet one is actually good and has emotions."
First thing I got back to my then 'home' was to look up everything I could find about Tsukihime and Melty Blood, which was really, at the time, very little. All I could find was: "...in a twist of irony, it is actually Hisui who has emotions and Kohaku who is emotionless. Hisui buries her emotions, while Kohaku's emotions are broken, her smiles all facades."
A good round of buying up doujin and web site searching later, I knew basically the entire plot proper. And I realized that all of the people I had on my list of possible apps were either: 1. Smiling, evil assassins with broken emotions (Seta Soujirou, from RuroKen), 2. Cute girls who were hiding the fact they were evil beneath a facade of cuteness (Momo from Project Justice/Rival Schools), or people who were just either cute or evil in general.
Then I realized: "Kohaku fits all of the basic archetypes of everyone I was considering apping... I'll never run out of ideas for her! She's three basic types of characters in one! :O!"
AND, I worked on the app, probably the hardest I EVER have. And got in. Hooray. XD
When Kohaku first got to camp, she was a little more openly crazy. She cooked Bad Things for people, poisoned or outright killed one or two, and was generally pinging everyone's "weird" radar without doing anything outright suspicious or dangerous. Meanwhile, I was buying and reading a lot of doujin for more random ideas.
Overall, playing her hasn't changed *too* much. The biggest difference is that: in the early days, Kohaku was alone. No one knew her, no one trusted her more than you would normally trust a cute girl, and she did not really have a reason to show her evil side. The only one who 'found out' her facade were Death and Delirium, and no one else really got close.
Thus, early at camp? Kohaku was DESPERATE to get close to people, for her own safety, and the possibility of manipulating them. Though Kohaku was a lone-canoner, one of her main considerations has always been that Tohno Akiha, her mistress, close friend/confidant, and target of revenge, would come to camp. When that happened, she would have to return to being a Tohno Family maid, not a character who made fake-smiles and waited on people to keep busy, but as someone with real obligations, and someone who would really test her deception skills again. Before that happened, she would need to know everything she could about camp and have some allies to fall back on.
One of the first people that caught her eye was as_apple_pie. Light had been playing the "I'm perfectly nice and normal :)" card a lot, and then when Light bit at an opportunity to use her, Kohaku pulled a SWITCHAROO on Light and made him her boyfriend, both took away the general impression they'd be able to use the other somehow, maybe.
Some other notable relationships were Kohaku with the Mess Hall people, especially Minagawa and convincing Izumi to let her onto the normal staff. When Jun (from Minagawa's canon) also showed up at camp, there was a fun bit where he sent her to the hospital, which somehow became a very good ice breaker for them both.
But, time passed, Jun and Light both left camp, and Kohaku's most stable position was as a camp cook. Seta Soujirou eventually came to camp as well, and they entered a (sorta) similar relationship of both trying to use the other, the main difference with the Kohaku/Light thing being that it never approached anything 'romantic,' and they both figured out their 'true natures'. (Or at least, Kohaku presented another view of herself beyond as a cute maid, for those reading ahead.)
But the real turning point was...
About half a year ago as of this writing, in mid-November or so, Kohaku's twin sister Hisui entered camp. Suddenly, Kohaku's whole outlook on camp begins to change.
First, Hisui indirectly informs Kohaku that time was not passing normally for them, meaning Hisui had not been stuck all alone in a mansion for several months, and one angry mistress and worried male protagonist were not wondering where she was. Kohaku's first reaction was to play this off as "Oh, I just arrived too! Where are we?", which she managed to maintain for a little while. It also meant that Kohaku had a *real* objective she could dedicate herself to: "Protect Hisui-chan."
Meanwhile, through coincidence, and a lot of thread jumping, Kohaku formed a relationship with cute younger pink-haired girl: Anita King. Though at first the relationship was purely to reinforce her status as a 'cute, older-sister' type, eventually it was revealed Anita-chan had powers of her own: the ability to control and manipulate paper. And then when she (AND Minagawa-sama) demonstrated she(/they) was(/were) willing to protect Kohaku when she was attacked by Kunou-as-Happosai...
Kohaku knew, even if an angry Akiha-sama were to appear at camp, she would not suddenly disappear into the night. She had two people who would willingly fight for her while she could maintain her aura of innocence, and this was reinforced even more when Kohaku made Anita her 'third sister'. Meanwhile, though camp was becoming more and more crowded, Hisui-chan would also be there for her, both as support, and as her mirror-image who would absorb all of the normal 'suspicion'. One girl claiming to be a maid and focusing on maid-like duties might ping a normal person's "something's off" sense, but with Hisui who was even more dedicated, not so much.
Light-san's return also surprised Kohaku in that it was not like Kyon's; when Kyon came back, he didn't remember anything, and their relationship didn't move past a first meeting. So when Light came back remembering all of camp, Kohaku was a little pressed at what to do. On the one hand, she now had people who could protect her, but on the other hand... what would Light think if she didn't act as forward as she had been? Ultimately, she moved to re-initiate the relationship, the main factor in her decision being: "It's what a cute dedicated maid would do..."
One thing that also affected how I played Kohaku was that around December of 2006, I finally got the chance to play the original Tsukihime game myself. Though I already knew the entire plot, there were more than a few details I wasn't clear about. That and the anime and manga, while providing interesting points (the latter more than the former), did not really expand on Kohaku more than what I already knew.
But the game? Oh, it made everything *really* clear. All of a sudden, I have canon references for how Kohaku would react to almost any situation, relevant to her 'true nature' or not, as well as even little mundane details like: "What type of cooking is Kohaku best/worst at?" And the not so minor detail of: "What DO Kohaku's drugs do and how does she get people to take them?" I was actually glad to learn a lot of what I had been working out about her and what I had guessed at was actually right, with maybe one or two discrepancies. (One discrepancy being: Kohaku never hated anyone in the Tohno family, not even Tohno Makihisa who personally raped her practically every single day of her life from when she was eight onwards. I had always assumed that she DID hate him and that her indirect killing of him was very personal, but I digress.)
1. Kohaku and Hisui were both orphans, adopted by the Tohno family at an early age and set to work to become maids. Kohaku was the older sister, and rather shy. She stated about herself later: "I never understood why people smiled, or frowned, or could ever discover the meaning behind it."
2. Kohaku is at some point, designated to become 'used' by Tohno Makihisa so he can stave off his own dehumanization with her power. He knows he's going to destroy her utterly, but knows he will go insane if he doesn't. This culminates with him raping her on her eighth birthday.
3. Hisui remains energetic and cheerful, and Kohaku becomes more and more distant. It's unknown if they ever even talk to each other.
4. Nanaya Shiki is brought to the house. Kohaku watches him from the window of Makihisa's room, but never actually meets him. She feels a certain emotion looking at him and his silent invitation to come out and play when he watches her at the window. This changes when Kohaku watches Shiki save Tohno Akiha's life by protecting her from Tohno SHIKI and getting killed in the process. Surprisingly, her emotion now is one of hate directed towards him. She later states: "I don't know... I guess I was just taking it out on someone. But I watched that boy, who lost everything to this family, protect this girl who was not at all related to him, and I wondered: "Why did he do that?" Why... was there someone he valued more than his own life? But if he could do that... why didn't he ever help me? Why was I surrounded by evil people? Why couldn't they have been kind, like that boy?"
5. Without knowing why, Kohaku met Shiki and gave him one of her only possessions: a white ribbon. She makes him promise to give it back to her, indirectly begging him: "Please come back."
6. Hisui and Kohaku's personality switches are almost complete: Kohaku has lost all sense of her inner self from going through her torture every day, losing herself in the delusion that "I'm a doll... so I don't feel pain or have any other human concerns. I can become whatever I want if I wear the right clothes and act the right way." Meanwhile, young-Hisui (appeared to) have the type of personality that wanted to be happy, even if something was potentially wrong. But, when she finally learns the truth about what her sister is going through, as well as watching one of her best friends die in front of her, she becomes depressed and horribly lonely.
7. Kohaku tells Hisui: "Don't worry, Hisui-chan. I'll take over your role for now. I'll give it back when you can be cheerful again." This frightens Hisui, who thinks she should shake off her emo immediately, but she sees Kohaku doing her chores, acting very cheerful and happy. She recognizes it's an act, but also observes that getting to act out the role and be cheerful is bringing her some happiness, so she doesn't have either the heart or the will to go back.
This makes clear Kohaku's primary motivation: she's a schemer, but she also is someone who genuinely wants to have fun with people, and be happy. She herself feels she's lost the ability to know what happiness is, but acting it out makes her feel better in some little way.
The game makes it clear when you complete her story: Kohaku is a 'propman'. Shiki experiences horrible dreams and visions throughout all of the story branches of Tsukihime, and they can all be traced somehow back to Kohaku. In fact, the entire reason the story even begins is the result of Kohaku's doing. Shiki comes back to the mansion because his 'father' Tohno Makihisa died. And a killer stalks the streets at night, filling the role of the 'main villain' of the story. BOTH of these crucial plot points, regardless of the route you take, are the result of Kohaku's actions. She is, essentially, why the story even happens in the first place.
Yet at the same time, she's not really a villain. Or at least not a villain like the rest of the villains in Tsukihime are villains. She doesn't attack people who are weaker than her, she doesn't even WANT to do anything she has been doing. She makes it very clear: "I felt nothing towards Makihisa, nor did I hate the Tohno children. But I had to do something... so I thought: 'What would a normal person do in this situation?'" Meaning, revenge, to Kohaku, was not personal, or vindictive, but another role for her to play, as much as being kind to people and laughing with them was. In this sense, no one at camp has really seen her 'true self...' even Soujirou who she admitted: "Hiding behind a guise of innocence... I intend to take revenge, or die trying."
Kohaku has a few basic boundaries when it comes to what she will do. But also has some concerning what she won't do.
Most obvious is regarding Hisui-chan. Kohaku suffered in Hisui-chan's place, so if Hisui was to become 'dirty', all of it will have been for nothing. It's implied in canon (and most doujin have it as fanon,) that when Kohaku let's Tohno SHIKI out on the town to kill, she requests he not harm Hisui. This is also evident in the Hisui True Ending: when Kohaku confesses she is responsible for everything, she's the reason the entire family killed each other, she adds: "Oh, but Hisui-chan never knew anything, so don't worry. She was clean until the end."
The EXCEPTION to this, is that Kohaku does implicitly manipulate Hisui as a means of protecting her own secret when she still needed to. When Shiki first returns to the mansion, he is not sure if Hisui was the original owner of the white ribbon. In the Kohaku path, Hisui is able to answer some questions Shiki asks her regarding it... but the only way she would know would be if Kohaku told her. Furthermore, there are times when Kohaku will impersonate Hisui to either feed Shiki medicine, or lead him somewhere without drawing suspicion to herself. Thus, though Kohaku will readily take advantage of Hisui indirectly, there is a clear line between what Kohaku will and won't do. If it would potentially traumatize or make Hisui appear to be 'corrupt', it's out of the question. But temporary, minor things that only serve to misdirect are fine.
Another interesting thing about Kohaku: she has almost no regard for her own life. She kills herself with hardly a thought, piercing her heart with a knife, and calmly states she's neither sad nor afraid. Nor does she try to dodge when someone tries to attack her after her plans all come together. She will lie and manipulate and do whatever she must to bring her revenge about and delay suspicion of her, but ultimately? If someone threatened her life, she would not truly care about death in and of itself, but only sofar it'd prevent her from accomplishing something. This similarly applies to threats of pain: pain is nothing to Kohaku, and she doesn't even feel it. This is to the point Shiki has to tell her to go bandage herself when she cuts herself cooking so badly that blood is flowing freely.
(I'm emphasizing this last point more for camp than to make a canon point: threatening Kohaku with death or torture will not work. Not just because of the moogles, but because she doesn't view herself as a 'living thing' anymore.)
Other than this, Kohaku has no basic qualms about doing anything to accomplish her goals. Kill people, poison people, drug people, betray those who love or are otherwise close to her... She won't be taunting people about how she betrayed them, but if it'll help her, she'll do it.
The No Sex rule is both an immense blessing, and a bit of a limiter for Kohaku. On the one hand, it means she can't be used as she was at the mansion, even if Tohno SHIKI was to show up at camp, or someone was to discover what her power is. But on the other, it means that if she did want to give someone her power, she'd have to either get them to suck her blood, or get them to receive it in another way.
If we were to enter a cfud world where characters with hidden secrets have them all blabbed tomorrow, and camp somehow came to regard Kohaku as a deceiving, murderous person, then all would not be lost. Kohaku has one last plan if it ever comes to that: ordering Mecha-Hisui to grab her, and then drive them both straight into the barrier. An order she's programmed called: "Operation: Kohaku Panic."
Kohaku figures that either they would get through, or camp would hit her with a harsh 'status effect' as punishment, and either way she wouldn't have to think about it anymore. In terms of meta-planning though, it'd be an excuse for me to bring out Kohaku from Hisui's Good Ending: a Kohaku with... basically, amnesia. XD It'll probably never reach that point, but it does give me something to fall back on if it ever did.
[Disclaimer: LOTS of spoilers for Tsukihime for those who still haven't played it or don't want to know what happens.]
So.
I was in living in Japan as an exchange student, December of 2005. I had three characters at cfud, Bob the Angry Flower, and Uotani Arisa and Sohma Yuki from Furuba, I was on a big Fruits Basket kick.
Meanwhile, I managed to meet constant_craver and we made a round of the various shops, restaurants, and Game Centers. Game Centers being like arcades in America, but have the advantage of: 1. GOOD variety of games, and 2. Relative cheap costs. (About 30 cents a pop, 75 cents if you're unlucky. XD)
And, one of the first games pointed out to me was this relatively recent release: Melty Blood. A fighting game based on a hentai game I had heard of but knew nothing about, with about 14 good balanced characters. We played for a bit where I got beat rather badly.
And, one 'character' really stood out to me: a tag-team of two twin maids. One trying very hard to look proper in a western Maid dress (Hisui), and one looking rather cheerful and upbeat (Kohaku). They stood out because I had discussed the possibility of a Fruits Basket based fighting game with constant_craver, and how if Honda Tohru was a character, all of her 'attacks' would have to be using items related to cleaning and cooking, and they'd have to do little to no damage. And, that was basically what summed up the attacks of the two maid sisters. Hisui and Kohaku both fought wielding feather-dusters, cooking instruments, and a broom-stick. (A demonstration of these can be found here. Or just do a search on youtube for "Melty Blood," you'll find lots. XD)
THEN it was that constant_craver let me in on the twist revolving around the maids: "The cheerful one is actually emotionless and sorta-evil. The other quiet one is actually good and has emotions."
First thing I got back to my then 'home' was to look up everything I could find about Tsukihime and Melty Blood, which was really, at the time, very little. All I could find was: "...in a twist of irony, it is actually Hisui who has emotions and Kohaku who is emotionless. Hisui buries her emotions, while Kohaku's emotions are broken, her smiles all facades."
A good round of buying up doujin and web site searching later, I knew basically the entire plot proper. And I realized that all of the people I had on my list of possible apps were either: 1. Smiling, evil assassins with broken emotions (Seta Soujirou, from RuroKen), 2. Cute girls who were hiding the fact they were evil beneath a facade of cuteness (Momo from Project Justice/Rival Schools), or people who were just either cute or evil in general.
Then I realized: "Kohaku fits all of the basic archetypes of everyone I was considering apping... I'll never run out of ideas for her! She's three basic types of characters in one! :O!"
AND, I worked on the app, probably the hardest I EVER have. And got in. Hooray. XD
When Kohaku first got to camp, she was a little more openly crazy. She cooked Bad Things for people, poisoned or outright killed one or two, and was generally pinging everyone's "weird" radar without doing anything outright suspicious or dangerous. Meanwhile, I was buying and reading a lot of doujin for more random ideas.
Overall, playing her hasn't changed *too* much. The biggest difference is that: in the early days, Kohaku was alone. No one knew her, no one trusted her more than you would normally trust a cute girl, and she did not really have a reason to show her evil side. The only one who 'found out' her facade were Death and Delirium, and no one else really got close.
Thus, early at camp? Kohaku was DESPERATE to get close to people, for her own safety, and the possibility of manipulating them. Though Kohaku was a lone-canoner, one of her main considerations has always been that Tohno Akiha, her mistress, close friend/confidant, and target of revenge, would come to camp. When that happened, she would have to return to being a Tohno Family maid, not a character who made fake-smiles and waited on people to keep busy, but as someone with real obligations, and someone who would really test her deception skills again. Before that happened, she would need to know everything she could about camp and have some allies to fall back on.
One of the first people that caught her eye was as_apple_pie. Light had been playing the "I'm perfectly nice and normal :)" card a lot, and then when Light bit at an opportunity to use her, Kohaku pulled a SWITCHAROO on Light and made him her boyfriend, both took away the general impression they'd be able to use the other somehow, maybe.
Some other notable relationships were Kohaku with the Mess Hall people, especially Minagawa and convincing Izumi to let her onto the normal staff. When Jun (from Minagawa's canon) also showed up at camp, there was a fun bit where he sent her to the hospital, which somehow became a very good ice breaker for them both.
But, time passed, Jun and Light both left camp, and Kohaku's most stable position was as a camp cook. Seta Soujirou eventually came to camp as well, and they entered a (sorta) similar relationship of both trying to use the other, the main difference with the Kohaku/Light thing being that it never approached anything 'romantic,' and they both figured out their 'true natures'. (Or at least, Kohaku presented another view of herself beyond as a cute maid, for those reading ahead.)
But the real turning point was...
About half a year ago as of this writing, in mid-November or so, Kohaku's twin sister Hisui entered camp. Suddenly, Kohaku's whole outlook on camp begins to change.
First, Hisui indirectly informs Kohaku that time was not passing normally for them, meaning Hisui had not been stuck all alone in a mansion for several months, and one angry mistress and worried male protagonist were not wondering where she was. Kohaku's first reaction was to play this off as "Oh, I just arrived too! Where are we?", which she managed to maintain for a little while. It also meant that Kohaku had a *real* objective she could dedicate herself to: "Protect Hisui-chan."
Meanwhile, through coincidence, and a lot of thread jumping, Kohaku formed a relationship with cute younger pink-haired girl: Anita King. Though at first the relationship was purely to reinforce her status as a 'cute, older-sister' type, eventually it was revealed Anita-chan had powers of her own: the ability to control and manipulate paper. And then when she (AND Minagawa-sama) demonstrated she(/they) was(/were) willing to protect Kohaku when she was attacked by Kunou-as-Happosai...
Kohaku knew, even if an angry Akiha-sama were to appear at camp, she would not suddenly disappear into the night. She had two people who would willingly fight for her while she could maintain her aura of innocence, and this was reinforced even more when Kohaku made Anita her 'third sister'. Meanwhile, though camp was becoming more and more crowded, Hisui-chan would also be there for her, both as support, and as her mirror-image who would absorb all of the normal 'suspicion'. One girl claiming to be a maid and focusing on maid-like duties might ping a normal person's "something's off" sense, but with Hisui who was even more dedicated, not so much.
Light-san's return also surprised Kohaku in that it was not like Kyon's; when Kyon came back, he didn't remember anything, and their relationship didn't move past a first meeting. So when Light came back remembering all of camp, Kohaku was a little pressed at what to do. On the one hand, she now had people who could protect her, but on the other hand... what would Light think if she didn't act as forward as she had been? Ultimately, she moved to re-initiate the relationship, the main factor in her decision being: "It's what a cute dedicated maid would do..."
One thing that also affected how I played Kohaku was that around December of 2006, I finally got the chance to play the original Tsukihime game myself. Though I already knew the entire plot, there were more than a few details I wasn't clear about. That and the anime and manga, while providing interesting points (the latter more than the former), did not really expand on Kohaku more than what I already knew.
But the game? Oh, it made everything *really* clear. All of a sudden, I have canon references for how Kohaku would react to almost any situation, relevant to her 'true nature' or not, as well as even little mundane details like: "What type of cooking is Kohaku best/worst at?" And the not so minor detail of: "What DO Kohaku's drugs do and how does she get people to take them?" I was actually glad to learn a lot of what I had been working out about her and what I had guessed at was actually right, with maybe one or two discrepancies. (One discrepancy being: Kohaku never hated anyone in the Tohno family, not even Tohno Makihisa who personally raped her practically every single day of her life from when she was eight onwards. I had always assumed that she DID hate him and that her indirect killing of him was very personal, but I digress.)
1. Kohaku and Hisui were both orphans, adopted by the Tohno family at an early age and set to work to become maids. Kohaku was the older sister, and rather shy. She stated about herself later: "I never understood why people smiled, or frowned, or could ever discover the meaning behind it."
2. Kohaku is at some point, designated to become 'used' by Tohno Makihisa so he can stave off his own dehumanization with her power. He knows he's going to destroy her utterly, but knows he will go insane if he doesn't. This culminates with him raping her on her eighth birthday.
3. Hisui remains energetic and cheerful, and Kohaku becomes more and more distant. It's unknown if they ever even talk to each other.
4. Nanaya Shiki is brought to the house. Kohaku watches him from the window of Makihisa's room, but never actually meets him. She feels a certain emotion looking at him and his silent invitation to come out and play when he watches her at the window. This changes when Kohaku watches Shiki save Tohno Akiha's life by protecting her from Tohno SHIKI and getting killed in the process. Surprisingly, her emotion now is one of hate directed towards him. She later states: "I don't know... I guess I was just taking it out on someone. But I watched that boy, who lost everything to this family, protect this girl who was not at all related to him, and I wondered: "Why did he do that?" Why... was there someone he valued more than his own life? But if he could do that... why didn't he ever help me? Why was I surrounded by evil people? Why couldn't they have been kind, like that boy?"
5. Without knowing why, Kohaku met Shiki and gave him one of her only possessions: a white ribbon. She makes him promise to give it back to her, indirectly begging him: "Please come back."
6. Hisui and Kohaku's personality switches are almost complete: Kohaku has lost all sense of her inner self from going through her torture every day, losing herself in the delusion that "I'm a doll... so I don't feel pain or have any other human concerns. I can become whatever I want if I wear the right clothes and act the right way." Meanwhile, young-Hisui (appeared to) have the type of personality that wanted to be happy, even if something was potentially wrong. But, when she finally learns the truth about what her sister is going through, as well as watching one of her best friends die in front of her, she becomes depressed and horribly lonely.
7. Kohaku tells Hisui: "Don't worry, Hisui-chan. I'll take over your role for now. I'll give it back when you can be cheerful again." This frightens Hisui, who thinks she should shake off her emo immediately, but she sees Kohaku doing her chores, acting very cheerful and happy. She recognizes it's an act, but also observes that getting to act out the role and be cheerful is bringing her some happiness, so she doesn't have either the heart or the will to go back.
This makes clear Kohaku's primary motivation: she's a schemer, but she also is someone who genuinely wants to have fun with people, and be happy. She herself feels she's lost the ability to know what happiness is, but acting it out makes her feel better in some little way.
The game makes it clear when you complete her story: Kohaku is a 'propman'. Shiki experiences horrible dreams and visions throughout all of the story branches of Tsukihime, and they can all be traced somehow back to Kohaku. In fact, the entire reason the story even begins is the result of Kohaku's doing. Shiki comes back to the mansion because his 'father' Tohno Makihisa died. And a killer stalks the streets at night, filling the role of the 'main villain' of the story. BOTH of these crucial plot points, regardless of the route you take, are the result of Kohaku's actions. She is, essentially, why the story even happens in the first place.
Yet at the same time, she's not really a villain. Or at least not a villain like the rest of the villains in Tsukihime are villains. She doesn't attack people who are weaker than her, she doesn't even WANT to do anything she has been doing. She makes it very clear: "I felt nothing towards Makihisa, nor did I hate the Tohno children. But I had to do something... so I thought: 'What would a normal person do in this situation?'" Meaning, revenge, to Kohaku, was not personal, or vindictive, but another role for her to play, as much as being kind to people and laughing with them was. In this sense, no one at camp has really seen her 'true self...' even Soujirou who she admitted: "Hiding behind a guise of innocence... I intend to take revenge, or die trying."
Kohaku has a few basic boundaries when it comes to what she will do. But also has some concerning what she won't do.
Most obvious is regarding Hisui-chan. Kohaku suffered in Hisui-chan's place, so if Hisui was to become 'dirty', all of it will have been for nothing. It's implied in canon (and most doujin have it as fanon,) that when Kohaku let's Tohno SHIKI out on the town to kill, she requests he not harm Hisui. This is also evident in the Hisui True Ending: when Kohaku confesses she is responsible for everything, she's the reason the entire family killed each other, she adds: "Oh, but Hisui-chan never knew anything, so don't worry. She was clean until the end."
The EXCEPTION to this, is that Kohaku does implicitly manipulate Hisui as a means of protecting her own secret when she still needed to. When Shiki first returns to the mansion, he is not sure if Hisui was the original owner of the white ribbon. In the Kohaku path, Hisui is able to answer some questions Shiki asks her regarding it... but the only way she would know would be if Kohaku told her. Furthermore, there are times when Kohaku will impersonate Hisui to either feed Shiki medicine, or lead him somewhere without drawing suspicion to herself. Thus, though Kohaku will readily take advantage of Hisui indirectly, there is a clear line between what Kohaku will and won't do. If it would potentially traumatize or make Hisui appear to be 'corrupt', it's out of the question. But temporary, minor things that only serve to misdirect are fine.
Another interesting thing about Kohaku: she has almost no regard for her own life. She kills herself with hardly a thought, piercing her heart with a knife, and calmly states she's neither sad nor afraid. Nor does she try to dodge when someone tries to attack her after her plans all come together. She will lie and manipulate and do whatever she must to bring her revenge about and delay suspicion of her, but ultimately? If someone threatened her life, she would not truly care about death in and of itself, but only sofar it'd prevent her from accomplishing something. This similarly applies to threats of pain: pain is nothing to Kohaku, and she doesn't even feel it. This is to the point Shiki has to tell her to go bandage herself when she cuts herself cooking so badly that blood is flowing freely.
(I'm emphasizing this last point more for camp than to make a canon point: threatening Kohaku with death or torture will not work. Not just because of the moogles, but because she doesn't view herself as a 'living thing' anymore.)
Other than this, Kohaku has no basic qualms about doing anything to accomplish her goals. Kill people, poison people, drug people, betray those who love or are otherwise close to her... She won't be taunting people about how she betrayed them, but if it'll help her, she'll do it.
The No Sex rule is both an immense blessing, and a bit of a limiter for Kohaku. On the one hand, it means she can't be used as she was at the mansion, even if Tohno SHIKI was to show up at camp, or someone was to discover what her power is. But on the other, it means that if she did want to give someone her power, she'd have to either get them to suck her blood, or get them to receive it in another way.
If we were to enter a cfud world where characters with hidden secrets have them all blabbed tomorrow, and camp somehow came to regard Kohaku as a deceiving, murderous person, then all would not be lost. Kohaku has one last plan if it ever comes to that: ordering Mecha-Hisui to grab her, and then drive them both straight into the barrier. An order she's programmed called: "Operation: Kohaku Panic."
Kohaku figures that either they would get through, or camp would hit her with a harsh 'status effect' as punishment, and either way she wouldn't have to think about it anymore. In terms of meta-planning though, it'd be an excuse for me to bring out Kohaku from Hisui's Good Ending: a Kohaku with... basically, amnesia. XD It'll probably never reach that point, but it does give me something to fall back on if it ever did.