find solace (belong) [KNY/BNHA]

[21] masked beatdown

uhhh, hi everyone TWT.

I'm so sorry for the super late update. I've recently started the new academic term and I've had an internal crisis and have chosen probably the most daunting and excruciating subject choices ever. Lmao I'm living my best life (not).

Anyway, here's the new chapter that I definitely haven't proofread, so if there are any and I mean any mistakes, please point and laugh.

Gasps and pants left her lungs, desperate and clinging to every breath of fresh air she could get ahold of. Her throat stuttered as her body shivered and convulsed.

Charlotte clutched the fabric right above her chest, pressing into her collarbone, as if the squeezing sensation would be able to overpower the agony that her heart was in. Her body was in so much pain that she felt the need to cry, to scream aloud and announce to the world that she was in great anguish. But at the same time, her mouth was gaping, no words nor sounds could escape her. It felt like someone was putting her in a chokehold, enough to make her head light and vision blurry.

Even after all the years of managing such violent attacks that seemingly came from nowhere, that wrecked and messed with her nerves, she couldn't ever get used to it.

It wasn't something that one could grow accustomed to.

Each time, it took her by such shock. A surprise that she never knew she could even feel due to the feelings and instincts that existed within her. Each time, it felt like her organs were being pulverised, her muscles being stretched, rolled, ripped and sewed back together. As if the very atoms making up her being were repelling each other, needing to get away from each other.

It was getting harder to manage. Charlotte had no doubt that Urokodaki had noticed her attacks. He simply respected her choice to not tell anyone about it, of course, for which she is immensely thankful.

Tanjirou, though with his smell growing sharper, still hasn't picked up on anything. He probably just assumed that the smell of blood bubbling at her throat came from the scratches and scrapes she obtained during training.

To be quite fair, Charlotte didn't really want to tell them anything. After all, what was she supposed to say? That she had a seizure, for lack of a better term, every few months? That she had an incurable illness that made her body have a series of fits over the years?

That she was fine? When she was coughing up blood and feeling as if her blood vessels were bursting open within the confines of her flesh and skin?

Even Charlotte didn't know what was causing such turmoil within her body. Perhaps she really did have some sort of illness that she either developed or was born with. Perhaps she had injured herself when she first arrived, did pushing her young body in building up stamina and strength back then cause such a backlash?

She'll probably never know for certain because such concern over something that gave so little information was futile. Instead of searching for ways to cure it, she'd rather be spending that time training and building up her strength to save people.

And though one might say that it was dangerous for Charlotte to have to deal with unpredictable bouts of pain, she knew for a fact that the attacks didn't happen when her body was flushed with adrenaline. When she was fighting for her life and the lives of others.

She stood in front of the boulder, large, intimidating, unscathed. And she wiped the blood from the corners of her mouth gingerly, but with practised ease.

Wait, persevere, endure.

As always, trying to ease her breathing, to calm herself. Until that sensation of pain subsided, eventually. It always felt like it lasted too long when really, it was quite a short amount of time that had passed.