And how do you celebrate your birthday? Spend half of it with your crush!

Chapter 22: Spending Time with Saori

Samurai took Max over to the Noodle Shop and as they were walking, Max felt excited and anxious at the same time knowing that he's gonna spend time with Saori on his birthday and he couldn't help but wnder what they'll do together and when they finally got to the Noodle Shop, he saw Saori sitting there with her best outfit that only Max could stare at with his dreamy eyes. Samurai smiled at this and he could see that Max has a crush overload on her and he chuckled softly as he said, "Quite the charmer."

Max walked towards Saori's table and as Saori looked up at him, she felt joyful to see him walk in and she said, "Hello, my handsome birthday tiger."

Max blushed after hearing that and he said, "Hello there, Saori. You look pretty as usual."

Saori giggled in response to that and she said, "Thank you. So...how shall we spend your special day?"

"Would would you like to do?" asked Max, sitting on the table.

"Max...it's your birthday. Whatever you want to do, I would love to do it with you." Saori said, smiling at him.

Max knew that look that Saori's making and he cannot resist her charms and sweet-looking face of hers and that was the one thing that drew in to her was her beauty and wonderful strength and because she's much easier to talk to and he began thinking of how he'll spend half of his birthday with her while Samurai slipped away to return to the house to go through with the plans for Max's birthday dinner.

After a few seconds, Max looked to Saori and said, "I think I got something..."

"I'm listening." Saori replied.

As the morning progresses, both Max and Saori went with Blaze to do some things that Max normally loves to do, but with her by his side and the first thing they did was play hide and seek in the forest where Max was the hider and Saori is the seeker to find him. Saori quickly runs across the forest to find him, but he proved to be evasive if he hears her footsteps coming for him as he kept hiding from place to place where he can't be seen.

Saori keeps scouring around the forest to find him and as she goes from tree to tree, she keeps missing him in every step and knows that he's bound to be somewhere. Max's tail stuck out from behind and it taps her on the back until it hides away again, but Saori knows that Max is around somewhere. She just needs to find where he could be and the his tail stuck out again, Saori quickly tugged it and it caught Max's attention very quickly as he looked down and saw her waving at her.

"You're good!" Max exclaimed.

"Always!" Saori replied.

Both tigers slid down the mountains using some old battle shields and they were having the time of their lives as they went up, down and around and Saori showed off her martial arts skills while on the shield and Max smiled in amusement as they landed on the ground, but both of them got off the shields and pummeled towards each other where Saori ended up holding Max and Max held her in a gentle, playful pouncing position.

They looked at each other and realized that they're holding each other's shoulders, giggling nervously as they got up and dusted themselves off and Saori said, "That was fun."

"Yeah, this is my big fix." Max replied.

"So...what next?" asked Saori.

Not long afterwards, they headed towards a quiet place towards the hills looking over the valley of Peace and when Saori saw the sight of it, she was blown away by the view and could see herself with Max in the future sitting in this place. She was breathless and said, "Oh...Max, this is amazing."

Much to the duo's surprise, they see a picnic basket with food stacked in and Saori said, "Who sent those?"

"I don't know." Max replied.

But they did see a note attached to the picnic basket and it read, 'Enjoy the picnic, you too! And be good! Akashi' and Saori knew that this was Akashi's note from that writing of his and she said, "My brother...I gotta thank him later."

They opened up the picnic basket and there's loads of food; noodles, dumplings, rice, sesame chicken and other things there and Max said, "Wow...Akashi must've packed up this food for us."

"Looks like it. This is gonna be the best picnic date...with you on your birthday." Saori said, sitting down.

Max sat down with her as he pulled out the blanket and puts out some food as the two began to eat and for Max...the best part about his birthday is spending half of it with Saori and it was one moment that they would treasure forever. Saori puts her arms around him as she laid her head against his shoulder and Max laid his head above hers and enjoyed the day.

"This is the best birthday of my life." Max said, happily.

Well...this is just the beginning!