A warm day at the end of June. In the high school yard, uneasiness,
last-minute arrangements, the same Gaudeamus Igitur addressed to another generation. Anna sits withdrawn, blinking once in a while, and revisits the last 4 years. She came here forced by her parents who were not satisfied with her no matter what or how well she would do. She takes a deep breath and accidentally smiles at an already former colleague. She feels as if her world is opening up. And once and for all she locks up a world in which she was only the younger sister of the valedictorian from 4 years ago.
(Translated by Delia-Maria Cocoş / 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. 
