五 (wǔ) means five — and right away Eon warns us it's "a little bit difficult." The first three numbers were easy: 一 is one line, 二 is two, 三 is three. You could practically count them. But 五 has a top line, a bottom line, and a little zig-zag squished between them. There's nothing to count anymore, so Eon and his teaching partner have to find a different trick.

Two jobs: one teaches, one imagines

The very first thing they do is split the work. "You do the imagination, I do the teaching," one of them says. That's a smart move, and it's worth noticing. When a problem is hard, you don't have to do everything at once. One person can focus on how the character is built (the strokes, the shape), while the other person's whole job is to ask, "Okay… what does this look like?"

So the guessing begins, and it is gloriously all over the place:

  • Maybe it's like a door — "like this inside, like a door."
  • Maybe a person standing inside it? No, that's not a person.
  • A horse? Nope, not a horse either.
  • A ladder, or stairs you climb up? Closer… but it still isn't quite right.

Even a stray "bullet" gets thrown into the mix for one of the little parts. None of these are wrong to say — every guess is the brain trying on a new idea to see if it fits. That's exactly what imagination is for.

From "wooden frame" to a jail window

Here's the part kids will love, because it shows that good ideas usually don't show up first. After the ladder doesn't stick, the shape starts to look like a wooden frame instead. Then — click — somebody spots it: "Oh, this is like a jail! A jail window!"

That's the picture that finally works. The crossing lines of 五 really do look like bars in a little window. And once they have the idea, they don't stop there — they ask the AI to adjust it a little bit. Make it more realistic. Add some light coming through. But not too realistic — "that's just too much," Eon decides. They want it somewhere between real and cartoonish, just enough to keep it fun. They even imagine a girl inside the jail, "like getting out." When the render looks right, the verdict is quick: "This is really good as well. So let's save it."

Notice the loop they keep running: draw the strokes → guess what they look like → make the picture real → tweak it until it feels right. That same loop carried Eon through 一, 二, 三, 四, and now 五. The character stops being a scary squiggle and becomes a thing you can see in your head — a window with light in it.

Why brainstorming beats memorizing

It would be easy to think Eon "failed" a bunch of times before getting 五. He didn't. Every "no, not a horse" and "not really a ladder" was useful — it crossed off a wrong idea and pushed him toward the right one. The jail window only showed up because he tried the door and the ladder first. That's how creative memory works: you make a pile of guesses, and one of them turns out to be the key.

Try it

Draw 五 big on a piece of paper. Now play the same game Eon played: say out loud everything it could look like. A window? A stool? A little fence? A ladder between two shelves? Don't stop at your first idea — give yourself at least five guesses, then pick your favorite and draw 五 a few times while picturing it.

Bonus: do it with a partner and split the jobs like Eon did — one of you "teaches" the strokes, the other one "imagines." And keep your pencil ready, because Eon ended the video with a big promise: the black hole is coming up next!