Wendy was next to sing her song. No one knew what sort of clown Wendy could be. She has a very liberal sense of humor, too. Everyone knew how much of a joker Wendy was, but no one, not even Seulgi, knew just how to what lengths she would go through.

  Wendy made a parody.

  She took an old school bald, pulled a ‘Weird Al’ then modified all of the words to something completely different. This song was supposed to be a sad and soppy song about loss, and the eventual suicide due to losing the love of their lives, of the main character of the song. Instead, she made the song about dropping a cupcake on the floor. She sang it with all of the overly dramatic earnestness of the original. Flinging her arms about. Kneeling on the floor. Bending over backward with one arm in the air. All of the cheesy, over the top, silliness that no one expected from her. It was just as sappy and sad as the original song, and sung it nearly line for line, with absolute perfection and with side splitting frivolity.

  Everyone was on the floor, gasping for breath by the time Wendy was done. Everyone was more than pleasantly surprised. Even the manager was caught with his ear at the door to the room. He also waved over one of his favorite people to listen with him. They managed to leave after the song was done and not get caught.

  The four others were able to listen to the song and thoroughly enjoy it. Yet, they also were still able to critique it. The parody managed to be perfect. Word for word. Beat for beat. Cadenced for cadences. Everything was matched, to the point that if you didn’t listen hard, you would miss the changes. Yet, she made enough subtle and non-subtle changes to the lyrics that would change the whole meaning of the song. She managed to change it with skill and near total irreverence. The only part that was an obvious change was that the original singer was male. It was pretty safe to say that even if the author heard the song, they would still be impressed.

  They took a few moments to catch their collective breaths after Wendy got done. Wendy got a big drink, and the rest of them were drinking more modestly. Wendy’s grin was so bright that she could light up the countryside. She was proud of herself for having caught everyone off guard and successfully pranked them all. No one seemed to mind.

  Next was Seulgi’s turn. She was much more sedate in her choices. Also, more safe. She was not afraid to do high energy like Katie. She was not so reserved to be unable to match Soo-young. She was, however, not nearly as funny as Wendy. Not intentionally, at least. As everyone knew, Seulgi could not really able to tell a joke save her life, but she was a hysterical person anyway. Something about that grin of hers. So, she had to do her own song.

  She chose a technically difficult song. One with many high notes as well as low notes. Many changes, transitions, modutions changes, speed, time, and texture all. Everyone there would find this song difficult. To make it even more challenging, she turned the music down to about half, so it was nearly an acapel. To make it even more difficult, she also turned her back to the screen, so she was singing from memory.

  Seulgi was a bit embarrassed to begin with. So, she started off by singing with her eyes closed. As she gained confidence in her singing of this song, she re-opened her eyes and looked at the rapt faces. She knew that she was good at singing. Normally, she was just messing around. She was just singing because she was happy, killing time before a meeting, or just because. But this time, she actually wanted to impress these people. So, she pulled out all of the stops, broke out all of her considerable talents, and just sang her heart out.

  She blew the rest away. Everyone already knew from her voice alone that she was a terrific singer. Everyone, except Soo-young, had a taste of her ability to sing earlier. She was just messing around earlier, she was not actually serious.

  Now, she was. It showed when she got serious. There may have been a fw or two in the song but if anyone caught it, no one noticed.

  Seulgi was like Wendy in that they were both natural singers. It’s nearly impossible to imagine them doing anything else in their lives; though they had. It was just a natural born fact that they should be singing for a living.

  But they are not. Seulgi is very successfully running her own department. She has a team of highly specialized people under her. Even the CEO is not entirely sure what to do with – or more importantly, without – her and her team. But everyone knew that when Seulgi got involved, someone screwed up and needed to be fixed, or things were about to get very interesting. What infuriated her contemporaries was that she had no flow charts, no organizational charts, no pecking order, or any other cptrap. She just asked people to do something – ASK, not tell for goodness sake! - and it got done. Sometimes she would not even look up from her desk and just said into the ethereal, not looking to see who (or worse, if anyone) was in the room to assign jobs, and things still got done. Some of the more hidebound manager types (including some VPs) were going bald from pulling their hair out.

  No one, not even Wendy, was entirely sure what she did. But, everyone is very sure that, whatever it was, it was done very well. The VPs wanted to give her the Employee Of The Moment, but no one was quite sure to which department she would be accredited. She was nominally attached to the accounting department, but she is neither an accountant nor overly fond of numbers more than she has to be. Katie, in her infant wisdom, knew that she was out to mimic Seulgi and her crew by showing up in Wendy’s office and starting to take orders.

  Yet still, they both seemed like they should be on a stage somewhere rger than a karaoke bar. Maybe somewhere with multiple tens of thousands of people cheering their names.

  Even they thought so, in their deeply buried dreams and desires.

  The only truly negative thing to say about the Kangs’ and the Sons’ is that they nearly managed to murder their dreams. But some dreams won’t ever die. And that might have saved a decent-sized group of humanity.