Kuba and Anya notice socks disappearing at Primary School No. 7 and decide to investigate. What starts as a joke quickly turns into a strange mystery with a very unexpected twist.
Kuba sat on the bench in the changing room wearing the kind of serious expression usually reserved for school photos and stern warnings about spilled juice. It did not quite work, mostly because one of his socks was bright orange and the other was green with blue stripes, so his feet looked as if they had dressed themselves in a hurry.
Anya leaned against the lockers and squinted at him.
"If you keep staring at your shoes like that," she said, "they might start explaining themselves."
Kuba sighed. "This is not funny. That's the fourth sock gone this week. Fourth. Soon I'll be coming to school in one sock and a mystery. And Mrs Jola will ask again whether I wash them one at a time at home."
"Maybe she has a point," Anya said, but her eyes were already gleaming. She crouched beside him and lowered her voice. "Or maybe it's not a mistake. Maybe something is taking them on purpose."
Kuba blinked. "Something like what?"
"I don't know yet," said Anya. "That's the exciting part."
Before Kuba could decide whether that was comforting or alarming, Filip burst through the door from 5B, hopping on one foot and clutching his shoe in both hands.
"Don't laugh," he groaned. "Someone put my sock in my sandwich."
He opened the shoe like it had personally offended him and pulled out a lump of bread, cheese, and a very smug-looking striped sock.
Kuba stared. Anya stared. Even the bench seemed to pause.
"All right," Anya said at last, rising to her feet. "Now it is serious."
"We need a plan," Kuba said.
"We need witnesses," Anya replied.
"We need someone tall enough to look under the shelves," Kuba added.
As if the school had been listening, the cloakroom door gave a slow, sleepy creak.
Mr Leszek, the caretaker, stepped inside carrying a mop bucket and wearing an expression so unreadable it might have been borrowed from a detective in a film. Something colourful peeped from beneath his apron near the hem of his trousers.
Kuba squinted.
It was a sock.
Not just any sock, either. It was red with tiny yellow stars and had a stitched warning across it that read: DO NOT TOUCH!
Mr Leszek looked at the three children one by one. Then he glanced down at his shoes.
"Which of you," he asked quietly, "has been losing socks since this morning?"
No one answered.
On the floor between them, two little socks suddenly twitched. Then they shuffled forward, toe over heel, as if they were following an invisible trail. Kuba took one step back. Anya took one step forward.
And from somewhere behind the cloakroom wall came a faint, brisk patter, as though a whole parade of tiny sock feet was on the move.