A group of high school students are dragged into a bizarre comedy contest at their school, only to discover the entry form was the easy part. The first task is waiting in the dark, and it is not funny.
School No. 17 in a grey suburb of Warsaw was the kind of place where success came with an echo. If someone won a prize, the whole school behaved as if a national holiday had been declared and everyone had just been issued free tram passes for life.
So when Mrs Szymanska appeared in the doorway of 2F with a leaflet printed on paper so bright it practically glowed, nobody expected trouble.
"Who wants in for the Joke Olympics?" she asked, still standing in the doorway. "I need four volunteers. Applications close today."
For a second, the classroom went silent except for the faint crackle of crisps being eaten under the last desk by Marcin, who had no intention of stopping for anyone. Beside him sat Basia, his best friend and unofficial chaos consultant, with the expression she usually wore when she was already planning something illegal, embarrassing, or both.
At the front, Krzysiek was staring at his calculator as if maths might help him escape the room before the bell. He was supposed to be solving equations, but instead he looked like he was calculating whether fleeing through the window would count as a reasonable option.
Then Kinga spoke.
Kinga rarely wasted words. When she did, people listened.
"I'm going," she said. "On one condition: nobody gets to tell me which joke to tell."
Mrs Szymanska didn't blink. She just handed the leaflet to Basia with the calm of someone passing over a dentist appointment.
What followed felt less like a school sign-up and more like a very strange casting call. Marcin signed up because he was already standing there and it seemed easier than explaining why he wasn't. Basia signed up because she liked the sound of causing a scene. Krzysiek signed up because he had lost a bet the week before and the universe clearly had not finished collecting. Kinga signed up because backing down would have meant admitting she had hesitated for half a second, and she would rather walk into a locked boiler room than do that.
"Organisational meeting today at 5:30 p.m. in the school basement," Mrs Szymanska said. Then she was gone, leaving behind a smell of chalk dust and the irritating sense that they had just agreed to something without actually understanding it.
After lessons, the four of them met by the shelter at the edge of the yard, the one place in school nobody used unless it was raining hard enough to feel personal. The door was open.
That was the first bad sign.
The second was the smell drifting up from below: coffee, fried bacon, and something sweet that did not belong anywhere near a basement.
"This is how horror films start," Basia muttered.
"No," said Krzysiek, peering inside. "Horror films usually have better lighting."
They went down anyway.
The corridor beneath the school was dim and narrow, its walls covered in an absurd mosaic made from yoghurt cups, bottle caps, and bits of coloured foil. At the end of it stood a long table where other students were already sitting: some from their school, some clearly not. One boy wore a dinner jacket as if he had been born in it. A girl with green hair was sharpening a pencil with the solemnity of a surgeon preparing for theatre.
Then the lights flickered.
When they steadied, an older man had appeared in the middle of the room as if he had been there all along and the darkness had simply been too polite to mention him. He wore a hat shaped like a toadstool and a suit decorated with tiny pickles.
He threw both arms wide.
"Welcome to the Joke Olympics!" he shouted, and confetti burst from somewhere overhead. "You have entered a competition that is about far more than being funny."
Basia leaned toward Marcin. "I already hate him."
Krzysiek, against all known principles, looked interested.
Kinga reached into her backpack and pulled out a large rubber duck.
The man in the pickle suit grinned as if this were perfectly normal.
"Silence, please. Your first task is waiting behind that door. Every contestant who passes will receive a piece of bacon for courage. And do keep in mind: this is a test of humour, yes. But mostly of whether you can survive being laughed at."
At that, the secret door at the far end of the basement swung open by itself.
And from the darkness beyond it came a sound none of them had expected at all. Someone, or something, was laughing back.