Yang Li had been painting watercolours all his life. They were delicate and pale like dragonflies. Only no one would buy them. To sell yourself you have to put your strength into it, to give everything you have in yourself, she heard one day in the corner of an easel. Since then, Yang Li has been painting only gouaches. With thick, pressed strokes. And bright colours. People appeared and the money started flowing. Only Yang Li appeared weaker and smaller. She was a palette with her body flowing in color. Her last work was a
self-portrait. Almost alive.
(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. 
