At Professor Lynx High School, a bizarre dinner contest pushes Class 2c into culinary chaos, and one unlabelled purple liquid may be the worst idea they’ve ever had.
At Professor Lynx High School, nobody expected a normal Thursday. Still, the announcement that crackled through the loudspeakers managed to stun even the veterans of hallway gossip.
The headmistress, Lewandowska, had decided to launch the Strangest Dinner of All Time Competition.
Not best soup. Not healthiest lunch. Not even most photogenic cake. The rules were simple: invent the most absurd dinner imaginable, and make it edible enough that no one would die dramatic deaths at the table. There would be points for creativity, nerve, and, apparently, a willingness to terrify your taste buds in public.
Asia, who had already appointed herself leader of Class 2c before anyone else could object, was halfway through filling a notebook with recipe ideas and underlined warnings like ketchup does not belong on everything, probably. Simon sat beside her, staring with open devotion at a block of pickle-flavoured tofu he had brought in a lunchbox like it was a rare gemstone. In his opinion, the world simply had not caught up with it yet.
Ola arrived next, carrying a small thermos and the expression of someone who had once said the words “let’s see what happens” in a chemistry lab. Bartek followed with a bag of spices from his father’s shop, each jar smelling like a dare. Natka, fresh off a week-long vegan detox and already behaving as if the entire school owed her a proper meal, dropped into a chair and demanded something with actual personality. Janek and Maja came together, as usual, finishing each other’s sentences and their snacks. By the time they all sat down, Class 2c had become the unofficial favourite in the school betting pool. Half the class thought they would embarrass themselves. The other half thought they might accidentally invent a new cuisine.
The library had been turned into a flavour lab for the competition, which felt both deeply wrong and extremely on brand for Professor Lynx High. Tables were covered with chopping boards, jars, bowls, foil, and ingredients nobody had ever admitted to buying on purpose. Disco polo thundered from a speaker in the corner at a volume that seemed designed to discourage clear thought. Someone had taped a sign to the wall that read: THINK BOLDLY, EAT CAREFULLY.
Asia flipped open her notebook and looked at the group over the rim of her pen.
“Right. We need something unforgettable,” she said. “Preferably unforgettable for the judges, not the emergency room.”
Simon lifted the lid from his tofu and inhaled with reverence. “I’m thinking garlic ice cream with ketchup. It’s elegant. It’s rebellious. It’s got layers.”
“Layers of bad decisions,” Natka muttered, but she was already reaching for a mixing bowl.
Ola grinned and tipped out a bag of neon-coloured pasta shapes. “We could do ravioli. But the filling is popcorn.”
Bartek, who had been lining up spice jars like ammunition, nodded slowly. “Seaweed and dried strawberry chips. Mango mustard. Sichuan pepper. We make the judges feel unsafe in a tasteful way.”
“That’s not a sentence,” Janek said.
“It is if you believe in it,” Maja replied, and stole a slice of pickled cucumber from Simon’s lunchbox.
For a while, the room filled with the frantic, ridiculous energy of people trying to outdo each other before anyone could stop them. There were egg shells filled with jellybeans, coffee noodles, frozen meatballs dusted with cocoa, and a terrifying idea involving beetroot foam that nobody wanted to claim. The laughing got louder. The recipes got worse. The notebook pages began to fill with crossed-out warnings and increasingly unhinged combinations.
Then Maja opened the fridge.
She froze.
“What?” Asia said, not looking up.
Maja slowly pulled out a jar of unlabelled liquid the colour of bruised plums and cheap glitter.
“I found this in the school basement,” she said. Her voice was lighter than her face. “Do you think it could work in our final dish?”
Before anyone could answer, the library door slammed shut.
The lights flickered once. Then again.
A cold draught slid across the room, lifting recipe cards off the table and sending them skittering over the floor. The disco polo sputtered, warped, and died in a burst of static. In the sudden hush, the purple liquid inside the jar gave a soft, eager bubble, as if it had been waiting for this exact moment.
No one moved.
Then the jar tapped once against the table, even though Maja’s hands were perfectly still.