Hikaru Nihei

Hikaru Nihei is the main protagonist of Hameln's Castanets in the Higanbana No Saku Yoru Ni series.

Hikaru was a very knowledgeable cram student who had served as a member of an animal raising committee. Because of this, Hikaru was known to not think highly of his classmates which led to him becoming bullied by them, receiving taunts from them, or having his notes physically taken from him and seeing them thrown in the trash. As a means of escaping his tormentors, Hikaru sought refuge in the rabbit cages isolated from the school. Even though he was appointed to care for the rabbits, Hikaru instead took immense satisfaction out of torturing the rabbits in needlessly cruel fashion in an attempt to vent his rage at being harassed by his classmates. One day when he was torturing rabbits, Hikaru is met by a youkai named Hameln who tells him that he could use his castanets to transform a person into a small animal. Hikaru takes him up on this offer and uses them to transform four of his bullies into rabbits. He then takes those rabbits and slaughters them in grotesque ways. Word soon gets out that those four children never left the school.

Hikari is confronted by Higanabana the next day who proceeds to recreate memories from Hikari's past. Hikari is dragged into his own memories where he learns that he had bullied a girl named Yuuko Kinoshita by taunting her and throwing away her notes. Ergo, the reason as to why he was being bullied in the first place was solely his own fault. She then creates a rendition of the grotesque murders by placing the four bullies in the place of the rabbits as a means of further making Hikari realize the error of her ways. Hameln attempts to kill Higanabana for her intrusion after turning her into a rabbit. However, she leaps into his mouth and slashes her way through his organs, killing him. She then transforms Hikari into a rabbit and places him in a cage with the remaining rabbits. Hikari tries to call out to Higanbana to save him, but as he was now a rabbit, he could no longer speak. The story ends with him getting raped by the rabbits.