By the time I went to school, my parents hadn't been to the seaside. When I was 6 years old, my mother took me to the seaside in the summer to feel the beach under my toes, to breathe in the salty breeze, to feel the waves breaking against me and get sunburnt. I even got broadcast at Vacanţa Radio for going away from my mother, after which I was scolded by her when finding me. I was the type of child that would run to the sea as if it were my lover, always looking forward to seeing her again. One year I have her up for a night somewhere else. Since then I only go to the seaside in autumn when it's calmer.
(Translated by Luciana-Maria Buruiană / 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 August 2021, the group has 7.000 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. 
