What the heck am I doing here, this won't work, he talks too loud and too much. This was my first impression of you, but I didn't tell you. I looked at you while your deep voice was hurting my brain. Later on, you took over my space like a Panzer IV, in full force, not giving a damn about anything, and turned my life upside down. Before I knew it, I was wearing a ring with a green stone. You didn't ask any questions, you just wanted me to have it. I'm still looking at the stone and ask myself what the heck I am doing here.
(Translated by Elena-Carmen Bobocescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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. 
