She used to wake up at sunrise and go on the balcony. She would sip from her black mug every morning while staring aimlessly. She would sometimes smile, but she was the only one who knew the reason, other times she would sigh and continue to sip. She had long fingers with square shaped nails and she did not wear any wedding ring. She would dress casually, comfortably and wear a
gray-metal thick bracelet and sometimes, she would listen to music. I'm not sure if she ever noticed I was there. Maybe she knew and she would avoid me willingly. I never got to see her eyes. Damn hat.
(Translated by Anca Cristina Georgiana Mihai / 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 Ficțiuni Reale. 
