Disclaimer: Hayate no Gotoku is not owned by me. In fact, I owe Hayate no Gotoku a 150 million yen debt. Really, it sucks. Any money I ever made off of this would go right to them, to put a dent in that debt. Hehe....

A/N: Alright then... next up here, Sakuya! Sakuya is more of a challenge than Nagi or Maria. Nagi's love affair is stated out in the open in the actual manga, and Maria's is rather easy to figure out and shape. Sakuya's was less clear to me, but I'm doing this chapter because I have a good idea. Hope I don't disappoint the Sakuya fans out there!

Perspective Three: Sakuya

All that crap about the middle child getting shortchanged is bull. The middle child gets the wisdom of the older one while getting to coddle the younger one. They get to do things faster than the first, and they have no responsibility. No, it's the eldest child that has to do all the dirty work. Raising two younger sibling, helping them with their every need, having to look mature for their parents... no, the eldest child is the one who has to bear the burden.

Sakuya knew that. After all, she was the eldest of five children. As the first one to come, she was the one who was the test child. Her parents used her to decide when their children could do certain things, just how much to spoil them, it was always that way. When her first sister came, Sakuya was casually shifted to the side, to make way for the new child. Then again, each time a new child was born, she was gently jilted off the stage so the new child could be adored.

Despite that, she was still expected to raise all of them as if they were her own children. The older Sakuya got, the more she understood that her parents just didn't give a damn. They had money, and they intended to use it on entertaining themselves. As time went on, Sakuya spent more time with her siblings than her parents ever did. She cooked for them, cleaned for them, understood their likes and dislikes, their fears and dreams, their habits, their mannerisms, everything. She knew her siblings inside and out, while half the time her parents had trouble remembering their names.

Along with her brother and sisters, Sakuya took on the responsibility of raising Nagi as well. When she had first met her, Nagi was a trembling, frightened little girl, and Sakuya took pity on her. After all, a girl with money like that could go though life trembling with fear. She had to be strong and arrogant, so Sakuya made her that way. Despite the abuse she often showed towards Sakuya Nagi, much like the rest of people in her life, looked up to her as a motherly figure.

Even when her parents provided Sakuya with Makita and Kunieda to ease her burden, Sakuya's life was in constant motion. If she wasn't cooking she was cleaning, or she was helping her siblings, or she was helping Isumi find her way someplace, or consoling Nagi, or doing some other task that needed to be done.

Not that she would ever let any of her friends see her like that, no way in hell. No to them, she was a slacker, a beggar, and an annoying freak. Yet how little did they understand. Did they know how much she had done to earn that slacking time? Did they know just how much she hated begging that old Mikado for his money? Did they even stop to consider the burdens she bore?

When she was with her friends, or with Nagi, Sakuya felt like she could relax for a moment, chill. Trips to far away countries, cruises and spas, only when she was with her friends did Sakuya truly feel like she was living the life she was meant to. But even so, when the trips were over and her friends sent her back home, there were her siblings to greet her.

As such, Sakuya became obsessed with comedy. She reveled in it, loved every moment of it. To others it may have seemed strange, but to Sakuya it made perfect sense. To her it was a relief, because she could paint her entire life as a comedy. If she did that, if she made everything a comedy, then it would seem less real, it would be less stressful, and she could smile and joke more often. It was how Sakuya dealt with her stress, with her anger, with her depression. It worked, and so Sakuya coasted through her life on an easier basis, viewing her burdens not as a crushing weight, but a gift from the comedy gods.

Then he showed up.

When she had first heard that Nagi had hired some seedy boy off the streets as her butler, Sakuya knew she had to meet him. She had wrote it off as something about a comedy partner, but really, it was her motherly nature towards Nagi. She wanted to be sure that this boy was good enough for her.

What had surprised Sakuya about Hayate was not his seedy look. It wasn't his amazing butler skills. It wasn't his bad jokes, girl-like face, or devotion to Nagi. What surprised her was that Hayte thought of Sakuya as a child, and treated her as such. At first Sakuya had not believe it, but when she confirmed it, she silently went into a furious rage.

After all she had done! After all the time she had spent toiling to raise four siblings. After all the time she spent shaping Nagi, helping Isumi, and all of the other stupid, menial, day to day tasks she had to preform day in and day out, he dared to make her out as a child? She wasn't like Nagi, even if age wise they were very close. To Sakuya, who had always believed that she was years more mature than her age, Hayate's treatment confused and angered her. She decided she would rectify the situation.

Along the way of this rectification, along the path Sakuya had taken to make Hayate look at her not as a girl, but as a women, somewhere along the line she somehow started to care for him. That time in the hot spring, when she had pushed him into the hot, steamy water, had pressed her body against him, she had been blushing. When he told her that actually did think of her as a women, Sakuya's brain stopped. How could she respond to that. She had slunk away, blushing like mad, her body heat warming the boiling water. When she looked at it, her own thoughts had surprised Sakuya. It hadn't been "I'm in a hot spring with a man", such things would never bother her.No, her thought had been, "I'm in a hot spring with Hayate."

Somewhere along the way, she had become embarrassed to be seen by him in such a situation. His smile which had once annoyed her now made her stomach do a flip, his touch made her flinch away, blushing at the contact. At some place along the way, His very being had somehow entranced her, had made her feel happy. His recurring acts of selfless devotion to Nagi made Sakuya feel at ease. Somewhere along the line, she had fallen in love with him.

He treated her like a girl, but thought of her as a women. It was a complex relationship, one of the comedy obsessed, mature-for-her-age girl and the naive, selfless butler. The conflict in this story was the fact that the butler belonged to the girl's best friend. Nagi obviously fawned over this man as much as Sakuya did. Someplace in Sakuya, there was still that maternal instinct, that told her not to take such a thing away from Nagi. She cared too much for her friend to do such a thing.

So instead, Sakuya defaulted back to their original interactions. She indulged in his smile, in his occasional touch. She hit him for his lame jokes, and praised him for his occasional good one. She glowed when he went out of his way to save her, and she gave a soft smile each time she heard another story about him from Nagi, Maria, or Isumi. Each time she indulged, her life seemed that much easier. Like her first attempt of comedy, Hayate seemed to give her life a sort of easy button. She could go about her day to day tasks, happy at the thoughts and memories of the clueless butler.

Sakuya was the oldest child, and so, she had it the hardest out of anybody. Her days were filled with one task after another, and to every person around her, she had to be a model of maturity. She relied on her butlers to do the clean up work, she relied on comedy to get her through the day, and she relied on Hayate to make her smile. If it stayed just like that, Sakuya figured, then life would be perfect.

Endnotes: Damn, another one down! Okay, a few things here. First off, I know that Sakuya's life really isn't as bad as I make it out to be here, based on the frequent vacations she takes in the manga, but has to deal with some level of responsibility and duty with four younger siblings. Also, I sort of borrowed from the anime, which had an episode revolving around how Sakuya acted as a sort of mother/big sister figure for Nagi, and shaped her pompous attitude to a degree. Finally, the thing about Sakuya is that she's one of the girls that I'm actually not sure if she loves Hayte or not. Nagi obviously, and Maria it's heavily implied, but Sakuya not so much. I hope they expand her character a little. If they do, then perhaps I'll go back and refine this chapter.

Well anyway, enough rambling. Next up is... Isumi-chan! Then we'll do Nishizawa-tan, then after that Hina-chan. After that... hmm, I'm not sure really. I will do more, I was thinking the student council members, and Saki... well, I'll play it by ear. Have a good one all!

Also yes, I realize I'm only a few... months .... late, I do apologize. I'll try to get the next one up quicker.