, subtitled The Unforgiving Flowers Blossom in the Dead of Night, is a Japanese manga written by Ryukishi07 of 07th Expansion and illustrated by Ichirō Tsunohazu. It was serialized between the May 2010 and November 2012 issues of Fujimi Shobo's Monthly Dragon Age magazine. 07th Expansion adapted the manga into a dōjin visual novel series, with the first game released on August 13, 2011 at Comiket 80 and the second on December 31, 2011 at Comiket 81. Plot Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni takes place in an unnamed school setting and is composed of numerous self-contained short stories, each told from the perspective of a student or staff member from the school. These stories feature bullying as a major overlying theme, as each story's protagonist is depicted as being either a victim of bullying or a bully themselves. Higanbana revolves around a series of urban legends caused by supernatural beings called yōkai, each of which claims ownership of a particular "mystery" and kills anyone who tries to investigate it. There are a total of seven "mysteries" at the start of the series, with numerous yōkai fighting each other in an ongoing turf war for ownership of these mysteries, which is granted to the seven yōkai who emerge victorious in the conflict. The stories' protagonists interact with at least one of the school's resident yōkai, who force the protagonists to deal with the consequences of their actions regarding bullying. Main characters Marie is the main protagonist of the first short story, titled Mesomeso-san. She is introduced as a student who is constantly bullied by her classmates and molested by her homeroom teacher at an abandoned school building neighboring her school. While despairing over her predicament in the public toilet of the building, she becomes the subject of an eighth urban legend involving a yōkai named Mesomeso (derived from the Japanese onomatopoeia for weeping and sobbing) that haunts the toilet. The school's yōkai offer her the chance to become a yōkai in order to fill the new rank in their hierarchy, which she does after being strangled to death by her teacher. As Mesomeso, she appears before the series's other protagonists to support them if they are victims of bullying, or to confront them if they themselves are bullies. Higanbana is the third-highest ranking yōkai in the school, also known as the "Dancing Higanbana". She is a very beautiful girl who takes