I don't understand where I went wrong. He was a child who seemed smart, brimming with life, always smiling. When he started reading dozens of books, I was glad. In kindergarten, he recited poetry with no emotions, with no blubbering, without any mistakes. I was on the floor when he was imitating TV characters. When he told me he wanted to apply for the theater, I sucked it up. I applauded his first roles, I even praised his beer commercial where he roared in the background. But now? He is 30 years old, he stays with me and practices live statues in front of the building.
(Translated by Zahra Kazemi / 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 4.300 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. 
