He couldn't cope ever since those fools put forth that European law of comfort. He was a train ticket inspector his whole life, spiritual parent for thousands if not tens of thousands of passengers. He started from the second class and celebrated passing first class with
peach-flavoured sparkling wine. It was the happiest day of his life. He reached the peak of his career. And there you go, some guys show up and say that the CFR trains are seven classes beneath the trains from western Europe. Hear that? Seven classes. He worked his whole life for nothing.
(Translated by Jin Cristian Yang / 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. 
