It must have been about ten minutes since she deliberately abandoned her phone in hope that she wouldn't be tempted to look for a sign. This whole time, she was between a rock and a hard place. No, I'm not reaching out to him this time. After all, I don't see the point in stretching it out. But you love him, her heart whispers. Even so, I, the brain firmly replies, say it's just a sickening need for interaction. You're you, his message popped up as the screen lit up. And there was peace from head to weakened heels.
(Translated by Andreea Grinţescu / 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. 
