Oh, you must live, the man whispered, rolling his hands over each other. He approached the window with small steps, pushed the corner of the curtain and looked up at the starry sky. Then he returned to the middle of the room. The stars must remain in the sky. I don't have to gather them anymore, he whispered, swinging his body from one leg to the other and rubbing his hands. He approached the bead fearfully, lifted the corner of the blanket and looked under it. Over the sheet, seven stars were twinkling with a weak light. He put the blanket back on, curled op on the carpet and fell asleep.
(Translated by Ioana Negrea / 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 February 2022, the group has 7,950 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. 
