$ 8.000.000

While she was playing with the other kids, Teodora realized the earring in her left ear was missing. She looked for it on the cement, but she couldn't find it. Meanwhile, one of the boys was waving it arrogantly in front of the others. Do you want it? Teodora reached out her hand. You have to give me something in exchange: eight million dollars or a kiss. She really wished she had eight million. The earrings were worth much more, because they had belonged to her mother. But she didn't have that money, so she went home with one earring.

(Translated by Diana-Maria Croitoru / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Professor James Brown)


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 January 2021, the group has 3.000 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, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

*Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.