He woke up like every day at 6:00. The sketches were ready, everything was set, all the tools were in their secret place. He had to move like a cat. He didn't want anyone to know. He didn't have to be suspicious. It was all thought out to the last detail. He had 111 days to go before he could carry out his plan. Everything was calculated exactly, and this year he had to succeed. And in small steps, he began to chip away at what he hoped would be the toy of 2022. He was the Chief Elf, and he had to prove himself worthy of Santa's trust.
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Marinescu / 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. 
