It was my cousin who had arranged for the two of us to meet. She had insisted that I should meet her. I knew she wasn't going to be my type and I was right. I disliked everything about her: her bright eyes, her lips, her tight waist and soft hands, as well as the tenderness of her voice. She smiled the whole time and looked me in the eye. And the fact that we had so much in common was really annoying. I was trying hard to make a mess of everything but she just seemed to find it all very amusing, and that added up to my annoyance. The most annoying moment however was when, on my way out of the restaurant, I stumbled and, since I had landed on my knees, I proposed to her.
(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. 
