In high school, the coolest classmates were born in January. At each anniversary they gathered in a circle and sang "Who was born in January above, above." In February, only the worse were born: Doru, the
snot-eater, Ana, the nerd, Victor, the farting boy, and Ionel, the one born on the 1st of February. Close to greatness, but still so far away.
Years later, when President Ionel "Juan" staged a coup that killed millions of fellow citizens, he issued a decree. From now on, January has 32 days.
(Translated by Irina Giurgiu / 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 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 Ficţiuni Reale. 
