We were called Ronin. Our master had fallen killed by that bloody Shishimi, Daimyo of Chiba. We were 47. We were many enough. We put our trust in the loyal villagers. We were waiting for the perfect moment. The emperor was going to ransom us and this way we were going to be saved. We had to clear our skirts. Our great moment should have been during the coronation ceremony. There, we killed that traitor, Shishimi, clearing our name. since then, my dear grandchildren, have passed 46 years. Grandfather, are some of your comrades still alive? No, my grandchild, I am the last of them.
(Translated by Diana-Maria Croitoru / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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. 
