The next scene opens with the shot of one of the inside walls of a cement underpass on a busy highway. The girl with black hair from the first scene is sitting atop the hill leading up to the wall; she sits with her hands on either side of her, touching stray, sickly weeds, Coca-Cola-stained pebbles and small chunks of blue glass. A few fading graffiti tags have been scrawled on the wall behind her, but they are illegible swirls and too few to make an impact on the overall image. The shots in this scene are done with a telephoto lens.

The film cuts to a closer shot of the girl. From her perch she appears to be observing something, but her eyes are not settling upon the traffic below – they are looking past the traffic and past the camera, off to the side of the wall across the road. Whatever she is gazing at appears to be either contrasting or highlighting her thoughts.

The character is actually thinking about the time she offended a friend of hers by not being able to attend a party due to illness. She had been struck with fever and remained in bed all night, watching her DVD of Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Linda Linda Linda; when later she dreamt, she dreamt she was in a film where nothing happened.

An intertitle with blue letters on a red background appears, reading WITH THE SUN. This intertitle cuts away to a shot of the girl that is slightly further back than the previous shot.

The man from the preceding scenes steps into the right of the frame. He has his hands in his pockets and stops approximately a foot away from the girl.

She does not so much as glance at him but there is a sense that both the actress and character know he is there.

‘You said you had a stupid dream of me,’ she says.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘And now you’re standing there as if I’m gonna say something you want to hear.’

The man shrugs.

‘I wouldn’t put it that delicately,’ he says.

The girl sighs.

‘Dreams, like films, are made to reflect upon us as we reflect upon them. You gave yourself your own dreams.’

‘So I can give you a nightmare.’

The girl relaxes her fragile frame, as if letting her spirit float free.

‘I have no use for horror movies,’ she says. ‘We use our imagination to form the fictional worlds of films, which are merely documentaries of actors pretending to be other people. And—’

‘We’ll go to the movie together,’ the man says, evenly but warmly.

Tears well up in the girl’s eyes, but not enough to fall. This is the end of the beginning of the film.

Part 1: Softcore World
Part 2: The Spirit Of The Commuter Train
Part 3: On Ambience
Part 4: With the Sun