Is it possible to make the rank shuffle without using invisible edges?

Help
5

I struggle with non-ASCII characters, but unflatten seems to work correctly for me. How does my input differ from yours?
Input:

digraph U {
  eee -> {
  a [label="abc æ z"]
  2[label="ü?"];
  3[label="ä?"];
  4[label="ö?"];
  d [label=" well ● ok"]
 }
}

Command (Linux) f=unicode.gv; unflatten -l4 $f | dot -Tpng >o1.png
Giving:
o1