The old man's beard was whiter than the canvas he was painting on. His works were famous, but he had never painted his portrait for fear of not giving it enough colour; who would appreciate a grim portrait, as was the particular style of his masterpieces? He worked nights and felt it was time to rest. The apprentice found him at the foot of the easel in the morning, all the acrylics turned upside down, blending in pastels over his face and outlining his facial imprint on the unprimed canvas in the most colourful
self-portrait.(Translated by Lorina Xiaoyu Hou / 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. 
