Ayumu Nishizawa is a girl from Hayate's old school who's had a crush on him for ages. When he shows up to visit, she's thrilled—but not everyone's happy about their connection. She's fiercely protective of both of them and will snap at anyone, even teachers, who talk trash about Hayate. After his parents bailed on his fees and he ended up getting sold to pay debts, she was there defending him.
She eventually confesses her feelings outright, which is actually pretty bold compared to the other girls chasing him. Unfortunately for her, Hayate gets a vision of Nagi at that exact moment and turns her down. The next time she tries to make a move, she literally runs into Nagi and gets hit with the harsh truth: in terms of sheer presence, Nagi's a dragon while she's just a hamster. She doesn't take the L gracefully—she vows to come back stronger, like a more powerful hamster.
Ayumu's competitive streak shows when she challenges Nagi to karaoke, but loses that too. Despite all this, she's got one thing the other girls don't: she's the only one who's actually managed to confess to Hayate outright, which means she often ends up alone with him.
In the anime, Ayumu's kind of a running gag. She appears in pretty much every episode, usually for under thirty seconds doing something completely random that has nothing to do with the plot—though it's almost always food-related. She's basically always eating something. Between her and Hinagiku, they made a deal: whoever wins gets Hayate to themselves, and they promised to push each other through the competition.
By season 3, she's moved into Nagi's boarding house as one of the tenants.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
