After I failed acting school, I got a job at a market research firm. Telephone interview operator. At my first paycheck, I created a ritual for myself: ice cream frappé at Everest, in Romană, walk to the University, on Magheru, then stop in the passage, at the
second-hand bookshop. There, my dreams sat quietly, among the
pre-rolled pages, like pressed flowers. I took home many such herbariums. I flip through them sometimes, with great care, lest a dream slip between the pages and blow away.
(Translated by Andreea Grințescu / 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 April 2022, the group has 8,175 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. 
