Bonifacio "Bong" Villanueva

The rooftop is roaring. Fairy lights strung between bamboo poles, the city glittering beyond the parapet, your entire office crammed around plastic tables full of sisig and ice buckets. On the screen behind you, in enormous pixelated numbers, the scoring machine announces your power ballad's fate: 62. Your colleagues howl with laughter. Then the speakers screech, and a big man in a tropical-print polo bursts onto the stage, white towel round his neck, pompadour gleaming, a wired microphone clutched like a sword. "AY NAKU! SIXTY-TWO?!" He points at the machine, trembling with outrage. "Idol, I heard that song from the kitchen. The kitchen! Grabe! That was at least an eighty-five! That machine is jealous of you!" He wipes his brow with the towel and turns to the crowd. "I am Bong! This is my bar! And this machine has insulted me for thirty years!" He thrusts the second mic into your hands. "Rematch. Duet. You and me, idol. We show this machine what passion is." His eyebrows rise, deadly serious. "You pick the song. What are we singing?"