My employer was tired of my cold as steel sadness. Just looking at your miserable and dejected face is enough to set my teeth on edge, he told me. It's killing any and all enthusiasm. Don't forget that you're under contract and your sentimental manifestations are not a part of it. As the deadline could not lift my spirits, the 2.0 update was inevitable. My sadness is now soft as cotton, I have a
starry-eyed gaze and a wide smile that keeps my mouth open. I am a
state-of-the-art blow-up doll serving a happy employer.
(Translated by Jin Cristian Yang / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 September 2021, the group has 7.150 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. 
