It smells of linden and his just lighted cigarette. He's leaning against the pole in front of her building, smoking his thoughts away. She's approaching, looking for the keys in her purse. He's standing in the doorway, blocking her entrance. She lifts her eyes, and their gazes meet for the first time in a long while. Time is holding its breath. A slap smacks his unshaven cheek avidly, followed swiftly by the purse that spills its inwards on him. He recognizes the small bottle which flies near his temple. It smells of linden and his cigarette.
(Translated by Camelia Diaconu / 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. 
