I haven't forgotten you, Eminescu. Each time I hear 15, be it January or June, I think of how many years it's been since your time. You're my benchmark. Whoever looks you up on Wikipedia, they attach a number to you, a date. Today? 132 without you. I did the math. You would have been 171 years old and I would not have felt this longing. You were brave, dear fool. They reduced you to a number of kilograms when they weighed your brain. Many have written about lime trees, lakes, copycat artists and shining stars. But nobody's done it while barefoot.
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Ciucaşu / 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. 
