They hadn't seen each other in a long time. Life had passed him by and left some marks. He couldn't complain, his path hadn't exactly been difficult. He'd achieved material wealth, gathered diplomas. The kids were fine, they'd settled down, had their own paths in life. And if so, where did this sadness come from, why the dissatisfaction? He'd even had a few falls, from which he'd gained some scars. But now that he'd found it again, he understood what he'd lost along the way, the child within him. Now he'd rediscovered his enthusiasm and he did not want to lose it again.
(Translated by Cristina Fliter / 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. 
