He had been at the orphanage for thousands of days. He wasn't keeping track of them anymore, or know their purpose. Days of prune jam and tiny happinesses on top of tiny shoulders, and big sorrows in big halls. Being a loner, he often played by the petunia fence behind the shed. When their eyes locked, they were both just as lost. It scanned him nervously, all frail and with ears as long as a summer's day. He pet it, and the little pup wagged its tail. There was no greater happiness for a boy. He had made a friend. A privilege. His own. A treasure.
(Translated by Carla Bețianu / 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 May 2022, the group has 8,350 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. 
