I asked her to come to the lab after class; I had to tell her something. I ran to the flower shop and bought three roses, which I hid them under my jacket. I rehearsed all night the two words I was going to say to her boldly. Before I opened the lab door, I pulled the roses out from under my jacket, fixed my hair and went in. It wasn't just her in the room. There were all my students. It was the wrong class. I stood in the doorway like a fool with the flowers in my hand. I told them out loud: Today we'll talk about chemistry, endorphins and thorns.
(Translated by Andreea Tobă / 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. 
