It's a holiday. The villagers have gathered in the ballroom. The floor, just washed with petrol, has an overbearing smell. I'm standing next to other girls and I'm waiting for the guy I like to ask me to dance. On the stage, the group starts to play some blues. I see him, he's coming here. I fix my hair and dress, my breathing is getting heavier. I'm blushing. I take a step towards him - he asks Florica to dance, the girl on my right - I continue walking, I exit the centre and run home crying. I fall asleep dreaming of the best dance that never happened.
(Translated by Jin Cristian Yang / 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 May 2021, the group has 6.400 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, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficţiuni Reale. 
