I was in the waiting room at the maternity ward, keeping Ionel company. His wife was in the delivery room, giving birth to their first child. Ionel was worried because the birth was proving to be difficult. I was trying to encourage him by telling that everything would be fine. After several hours of waiting, the doctor finally comes. Smiling, which means it's ok. What do I have, a boy or a girl? my colleague asks. You have a boy and a girl, said the doctor with a wide smile. Ionel, although a sturdy
2-meter-tall guy, fell down fainting.
(Translated by Ecaterina Bucovanu / 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 December 2021, the group has 7.750 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. 
