She sold trinkets on the street. You passed her every day, but she caught your eye on a summer afternoon when, in the sunset light, she looked like a figure detached from the shadow theatre. Fear could be read in her pitiful eyes in the epicanthus and in the sharp voice that repeated: the little girl has a fever. You saw her abandon her merchandise, then leave the scene on a scarlet scooter, with two ideograms in number: 真爱. You smiled, deciphering the puppet's message: two words move the Moon, the Sun and all the stars - true love.
(Translated by Denisa Dărăban / 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. 
