We were invincible, immortal. We became blood brothers, swearing never to part. We embedded in our skin the symbol of our friendship. The scorpion. In fact, that's all the neighborhood tattoo artist knew to scribble in blood. We scattered like partridges and ended up being only the shadows of the immortals we felt like. The system swallowed us, with a satiated burp. Even the tattoo artist became a dentist. Only the faded drawing on the skin still holds us together, daredevil children we were.
Amicus alter ego.
(Translated by Claudia Alexandra Văcărescu / 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. 
