Her first thought was that she would have no one to talk to anymore. She had sacrificed everything for work, and today she had left with only a pot of almost withered flowers. On the way home, she looked for a close person. She just wanted a moment of gentleness. She saw his neighbour alone on a bench in the park and sat down next to him. An almost beautiful day, she exclaimed. He looked at her in surprise, then replied dryly that he needed to send an email. She shook her head, then let the bitter time pass.
(Translated by Carol Popa Zafiriadi / 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 March 2022, the group has 8,050 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. 
