A billion trillion stars in the Universe.
Twenty-five thousand light years from here to the Milky Way. Seven and a half billion of people on this blue planet, spinning around the Sun since four billion years ago; in your city live two million people and four hundred thousand cats. A thousand minutes go by each day, between the morning alarm and the bedtime story about forty thieves sailing on seven seas and over three horizons. It's a wonder that we found each other in this big world, my one true love.
(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. 
