Every 7 years I take the escalator. On the first floor, I left my childhood smelling of roasted apples and sweet bread. On the second floor I left my teenage years, the emotions of the first exam and the feelings of the first love. On the third floor I began a new road, of maturity. On the fourth floor I meet you, the one giving reason to my life. On the fifth floor I saw the first wrinkle. Now, I reached the sixth floor. I live here for some time with the people in my life, who come and disappear like a normal passing of time. I'm going to the seventh floor.
(Translated by Andreea Denisa Dinu / 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. 
