I would legalize and applaud the tears of strong men, because I like them. And the sweat from the excruciating emotion of the first dates. I would frame hypochondria as deprived of liberty, because it makes me anxious. I would break down stereotypes, preconceptions, stupid idealizations and rebuild forgotten smiles, encouragement and miracles. I'm kidding, I'm just doing what I want. I would wave to the people from the balcony. I would take a lunch break as soon as I woke up, sell the country illegally and go to the Maldives. And you couldn't catch me.
(Translated by Blanca 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 June 2021, the group has 6.650 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. 
