Listen well, my boy. The army, fighting in pointless wars, building muscles at this gym or the other, the money in your accounts, trips abroad - none of it makes you a man, do you understand? Driving around in fancy cars is useless, that's not how you become a man. Women make you a man, my boy. Within them lies the entire Universe and all the strength in it. Love her, respect her, and you shall grow strong. The child grew up and he followed his grandfather's advice. He has become a man and a half. Every week, he loves a new woman.
(Translated by Diana Mîndruţă-Tănăsescu / 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. 
