She had grown up and bloomed. She'd become a real young lady. Two weeks before she'd come home holding hands with a boy. The father's vision had grown blurry. What's this blighter doing with you? Is that what I've raised you for? You come with the barber's son? From this moment on, I never want to see you again. And he didn't see her all summer long. Only the grandmother smiled when she gazed up at her house's attic turned into a secret room. Through the cracks appeared out of the blue in the ashen planks, sneaked wandering glances. The world was in a different story.
(Translated by Ioana Ștefan / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In June 2022, the group has 8,500 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
