The kid was happy all the time. He always woke up with a smile on his face, sipped from his chipped mug with a smile on his face and stayed happy all day long. The feather suddenly stopped. No, no and no. It sounds pathetic. I crumple up the paper and throw the lump in the trash. I start again. The kid always woke up happy, happily sipped from the chipped mug, and most of the time spent the day with a smile on his face. No, no, and no. Even more pathetic. I crumple up the paper and make myself a cup of coffee. Maybe I should wait a little longer. Let the kid grow up.
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Marinescu / 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 January 2022, the group has 7.830 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. 
