The 7 years at home don't count. We hadn't seen each other. We studied in the same school for 10 years. You saw me, I didn't. Then you went ashore. For another 10 years we learned the same trade, without seeing each other. For another 2 or 10 years we have built families, houses, children. We became more and more lonely. For another 10 years you have been orbiting closer and closer to the longing of the country you said. We've finally seen each other in the last 10. Now we hope to have at least 10 more years to hold hands, like two children forever in love.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Mușetescu / 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. 
