The Eccentric Master and the Fake Lover

Good Fucking Lord God Almighty,
I am so fed up with every Japanese author kniwing of no other phrase to express an excited anxiety “waited or whatever.. With Bated Breath”.
Recently I’d read a LN where I believe they were watching a play or such & where waiting for the climactic part “with bated breath”? He really couldn’t have said they were so “entranced that they were litterly leaning so far forward to be sitting on the edge of their seats”? Or something similar along that train of thought.

Yet here ch7 is even worse example.
“Once the witches flying overhead were long out of sight, Oswald at long last exhaled his bated breath. “Looks like we gave them the slip for now.””
Really, after holding your breath while invisable praying not to be caught, you exhaled bated breath?
Try a little more creativity you hacks, write something from your heart not the same cliched words used by every damed LN author over the last 10+ years.
Maybe try something like.
“Once the witches flying…, nearly blue in the face for lack of air, Oswald gratefully released his exasperated breath, once again able to breath anew a breath of fresh air”.
Or anything shorter if needed but “exhaling his bated breath” is not just an exceedingly redundant use of this over used turn of phrase in Pon LN’s (screw it, I know if Pon is PC, ambient or derogatory usage. I don’t recall P.K.D. using the term in his short story but that’s been 20-30 years since I’d last read it & as I’ve Just finished a marathon of season 3 “The Man in the High Castle” & unless it terns out to be an overly offensive word (to the Japanese, not some Liberal Pansy Ass Fuck here in the US) it will henceforth be far easier to write quickly than always writting “Japanese”.)), it makes absolutely no damn sence being used as an expression here as it was.