DISCLAIMER: Full credit goes to Nakamura Yoshiki, the creator of Skip Beat, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Height's, and Yoshishige Yoshida's Arashi ga Oka. A full bibliography of works cited will be included with Chapter 10. The only thing I own is the character O'Hara Cho (an OC).

My thanks to the wonderful OnePlotThickens for their help Beta-ing this story.

They've helped to give it a finesse I couldn't achieve by myself.

STORMY HILLS

4| Duel

They were now filming one incredibly long sequence. The surrounding set had been created to look like a scruffy courtyard, mainly used by the servants though hogged by Kinu and her brother when they were younger and sent out to play in the rare sunshine. The camera would roll, and out of view (behind some false walls made to look like the edges of storehouses and servant's quarters), Hidehito and Kyoko entered and exited the set.

Each pass they made of one another would become less elaborate as the scene progressed. No words would be exchanged, only looks and the messages their bodies portrayed as they progressed from adolescents to the sparking of Kinu and Onimaru's relationship.

Surprisingly few sets were used. The pieces the teams of creators had made from cheap materials could be reworked into other scenes; disguised or altered under a different lighting rig. The indoor sets were just as limited, mainly revolving around three established places. The rest, again, could be winged with interchangeable shoji panels to give the illusion of a home's infrastructure.

The clapperboard clacked together, and the scene began:

Kinu crouched in the dirt outside of his hut, angling the mirror just so. A small beam of light reflected and hit him in the eye.

The camera zoomed in to capture Onimaru's irritation, and how he grunted before hunching down over whatever it was he had been working on.

The annoying beam of light bounced off the mirror again, this time hitting his cheekbones. Onimaru stalked out his hut, intent on stopping on whoever it was purposefully teasing him. Kinu looked up in shock as he stomped towards her, his bare feet raising small clouds of dust as he shambled closer.

Onimaru's expression could be likened to that of a gathering storm as he leant over Kinu, plucking the small oval-shaped mirror from the young Lady's hands. His lip curled, and he straightened again- towering above her. Kinu fell from her crouch onto her posterior, getting dust on the back of her kimono.

Kinu pouted, her petulance becoming on her elfish features. Even at such a young age, she had been primped by her maid, and the puckering red lips appeared angry and raw, even if her demeaner wavered only slightly from placid.

She stretched out her hand impatiently. Onimaru deliberated whether she wished to be helped from the ground, or whether she wished for her trinket to be returned.

It was at that moment they were interrupted.

Kinu's brother, Hidemaru, pompously put himself between his sister and Onimaru; puffing out his little lordly chest like the ruffled feathers on a bird's breast. He reached to aid Kinu while his eyes locked with Onimaru's. The pair stared at one another, quietly getting the measure of each other. A gaggle of servants watched nervously from a distance, unsure as to whether they should intervene.

Onimaru's lips pulled back in a mock snarl as Hidemaru sneered.

Kinu slapped Hidemaru's hand away, lifted herself from the ground with as much dignity as she could muster and allowed herself to be whisked away by her maid.

Hidemaru and Onimaru battled discreetly against one another. The young Lord conceded first, his sneer giving way to a knowing smirk as he noticed the small mirror engulfed in Onimaru's hands.

This would be the pick-up crew's time to film an extra scene for the Director's to play about with, showing Onimaru's punishment, dealt out by Hidemaru, for supposedly taking his sister's possession. As it stood, the only way the audience- who weren't privy to this extra scene unless the bought the pending extended editions of the film some length of time after it had aired on television, would know that Hidemaru had punished Onimaru at all would be when Kinu and Onimaru passed each other in the restrictive courtyard. Kinu was aghast as Onimaru resisted the touch of one the servants as she treated the severe lash marks on his back.

Hidehito had sat in makeup while they applied the long gashes moulded from latex onto his back, dabbing it gently with makeup similar to his own skin tone. The blood would hastily be applied in the wings while he waited for the next time he had to walk past Kinu as Onimaru.

In the end though Kinu's horror served to spur him on into leaving quicker; Onimaru would hastily escape offset behind one of the removable walls before Kinu or the servant could stop him, and a reluctant Kinu would go about her way, the sight of the gashes never quite leaving her mind.

They would pass each other frequently, stealing inquisitive glances at each other.

The highborn Lady and the orphaned urchin her father kindly took under his wing. The nobody that her father had named, and welcomed into their home. She had grown to see past the boy's roughened, perpetually angry expression to the quiet, understanding soul that lay underneath.

Onimaru was more at one with the sacred mountain they lived on that her own brother, the latter of whom was destined to inherit their father's mantle.

The looks the two shared as they passed each other spanned from their late childhood to their adolescence. They grew ever friendly, ever closer. Onimaru was older, wiser in a way that her brother's education could not prepare someone for. Onimaru knew things, could protect her, would allow her to confide in him. Perhaps it was wrong to indulge her tenuous friendship with him, but Kinu found herself slipping away from propriety everytime she caught the way he had begun to look at her.

To him, she wasn't a strip of silk that could be sold off to the highest bidder, nor something so precious it had to be preserved behind temple walls or embroidered to enhance its beauty.

She was Kinu.

She was free.

When she was old enough, she would be his.

Blood lay between them.

Kinu knew she was younger than him, and lesser developed than the women that served in their home. She knew of the rites her father adhered too. Female family members who did not marry in to bear a child, must be married or sent to the local temple to serve as soon as their moon cycles began.

The first time it happened, her maid all but dragged her to a hut outside of the main house. The very same structure had brought she and Hidemaru into the world, as their mother confined herself there during her labouring periods. The maid locked her inside, and bid her goodnight. Onimaru had watched, seeing Kinu's eyes wide with fear as she desperately fought against the maid's hold. She would remain inside until her cycle ended, miserable, alone and hurting for as long as it took only infrequent intervals for food.

Frightened and alone, Kinu cried out for anyone to come and help her as the sun finally set and a chill seeped through the stone walls.

No one came.

The next time she bled… she would be gone.

The clapperboard sounded again, and applause filled the set.