I was walking on the street sweaty, clenching the love in my fist. For months I've been tossing and turning but I was sure then. Once the sun settled, I knocked on her door. She opened and I froze. I hadn't seen such fright not even in the face of death. She looked at the fist, she was watching me like a deer in front of the wolf and I knew it was over. She was seeing the other in me, the one she ran away from. The door closed before I got to show her what I have in my palm and to ask if she wants to be my wife. And to think all this happened because I had no money left for the little box.
(Translated by Nina Tufă / 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. 
