One was the first and the was unique. When Two came around, everything divided. Three changed the world because he wanted to play. Four brought stability when things started going in a weird direction. Five was enough for each hand and the dice were cast. Six came cracking jokes, because he knew he had an older, more symmetric brother. Seven was obviously magical. Eight rose up from infinity and stayed. If only we had Nine lives, the world would have continued like that. When Zero showed up, nothing stayed the same.
(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 July 2021, the group has 6.800 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. 
