Lucică drew a large circle, then, using chalk, he separated it into six slices on which he wrote: France for Mara, Germany for him, Italy for Oana, England for Biba, Romania for me. Who are you? Alaska, Alin wrote on the pavement. We started playing. Alin conquered my country piece by piece. The following summer we played without him and now I continue to feel bad that I didn't get the chance to tell or write to him that my whole childhood I had been in love with him. He was the eldest son of the
deaf-mute family who used to live on the ground floor.
(Translated by Ioana Stan / 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 February 2021, the group has 4.300 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. 
