He was never wrong. He knew exactly how he spent his money. Three eggs, half a tank of gas, a liter of oil and a loaf of bread. Total of 19,80. He was driven crazy. He couldn't find 20 cents, to make it 20, as much as he had taken. He turned the coat on all sides. Nothing. It wasn't until half an hour later that he remembered meeting Săftica. She was with a little child and him being in a good mood, had given the boy the penny. He shouldn't forget to tell the stonemason to write on the cross under his name Philanthropist. Lică Păstârnac. Philanthropist.
(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. 
