ハヤテのごとく！/Hayate no Gotoku Chapter 370
Hayate the Combat Butler Manga Chapter 370

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Isumi absorbs Yozora’s flames and wants some questions answered by their mysterious attacker. Yozora scoffs at the very notion and threatens the young Athena. Hayate springs in to attack Yozora in order to defend Athena, and though Yozora manages to dodge the attack, Tama gets Athena to safety. Yozora turns Hayate’s attack into her advantage for a counterattack, but an attack by Isumi thwarts that. Yozora is able to catch her ofuda easily and not be harmed by them. After grinning at the frustrated Isumi, Yozora leaps out the window, breaking it in the process, and escapes across the rooftops.

With the coffin destroyed, there’s nothing left to do but clean up. Isumi takes the torn bottom corner of the picture and requests that Hayate secretly lend her a room to act as a guard room. Since the only room they have left is the one the coffin was in, Isumi takes that, though Father Radiostar and Tama aren’t too happy with being left with the storage room.  Isumi erects a powerful barrier on the apartment-house and later stops by to see Sakuya to show her the photo fragment. Sakuya identifies the boy in the photo as “Himegami-neeyan,” then destroys the image with her powers.

Meanwhile, Chiharu returns home to the apartment-house to discover that with 100% occupancy, things have become very lively. It makes her smile to think that they will have an interesting summer.

Thoughts/Review:

I picked the best time to really push forward on my back-manga catchup project. As such, I was able to recently read about Chiharu finding a photo with the bottom left part torn off, featuring an old man and speaking of the 28th (whatever that is).  In taking that photo back from Hayate, Yozora implied that the torn part is the most important part.  Now we know why.  If this is Nagi’s former butler Himegami (and I think it is), then maybe the reason Yozora had the photo sealed in the coffin was due to the image itself being used to somehow control Himegami, or it contains some other power.  Otherwise, (1) why would it be sealed, (2) why would Yozora say it is the most important part of the torn photo, and (3) why would Isumi destroy it?  Isumi’s actions reminded me of Yuuko-san in xxxHOLiC, where she burned a feather in similar fashion because it was dangerous.

Anyway, this Yozora character is quite interesting. She appears to have the same level of magical ability as Isumi, since neither of them could harm the other.  Physically, she’s on par with Hayate, and though he landed a blow on her before, this time, she was able to dodge it.  As to her leaving the premise, I suspect it was because she’d done what she set out to do — destroy the coffin.

As to the barrier Isumi installed, I figure that Yozora will be able to breach it, should she wish to do so.  I tend to suspect that Isumi will now be able to just appear in the newly established “guard room” whenever she wants, rather than arrive via the more humorous way as she did for this story arc (literally flying in through the closed window).

Finally, though Chiharu may have been smiling because they now have a full house, meaning more adventures, I smiled because Hata-sensei’s “walk” through showing all the female residents via Chiharu’s eyes showed me that Hayate’s live-in harem is now complete. *lol*

So, a good chapter here in terms of plot. I’m hoping we learn more about Yozora soon, but considering how long ago her introduction was, that probably won’t happen. *lol*