Manole, Manole, I wanted to build something beautiful together, not build your fears through me. Ah, you were too young, and I had no guilt that your eyes were running away with them and your soul. Your sense of godliness had long since disappeared. Your parents didn't want you as a monk, anyway. Why should you have turned me into a monastery, when you know all too well that monasteries are just as many fears that will sooner or later collapse. Nothing passes the test of time here.
(Translated by Bianca Dumitru / 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. 
