He was 5 and mom sent him for the first time shopping alone. He was supposed to buy bread and apples. He was standing with the bill in his hand, all proud of himself. 'Till he reached the first floor, though, the negative thoughts reached him: how do I buy things from different stores with only one bill? If I give the money for bread, I can't buy apples anymore. And opposite. What do I do? Should I come back and mom? No; she said I am a big boy and she counts on me. When he reached the first floor, he was all sweaty, but smiling - that's it, I know: I tear the bill in two.
(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. 
