What's the secret to happiness? They asked me. They were right to do so, I'm famous, a rich old man, and they mistake that for happiness. Happiness, I told them, was back when I was a child walking my dog by the river. I would throw a stick in the water and he would bring it back. After that, he would shake the water off, give me the stick and then jump on me, drenching me completely. That's happiness for you. But what about fame, what about wealth? Fame turns you into a poster and wealth into a sleazy slave. Only gratitude makes you happy. And a dog.
(Translated by Cristina-Bianca Ion / 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. 
