I, the nearsighted nerd, was going to date the coolest girl. I had spent the whole day getting ready and, after giving it a lot of thought, I decided to go without my glasses. I desperately wanted her to like me.
So I bought a bunch of flowers and reached the coffee house two hours in advance. I had to wait for her for another 4 hours, but when I finally spotted her coming my way, I lost my head and awkwardly held her in my arms. But she froze. Sir, I'll have to finish cleaning here- it's closing time, I heard her say. Puzzled as I was, I gave her the bunch of flowers.
Sir, just take your bunch of parsley and get out of here.
(Translated by Elena Florea / 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 March 2021, the group has 4.500 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, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficţiuni Reale. 
