He was just a disciple, as pure as an acacia. But it was time to be initiated and his feet trembled with fear. Upon entering he had been given a crumb of bread and a cup of water. Cast off the old things, the voice of the master could be heard from beyond the thin walls. As he stepped on the threshold, his clothes started rotting, dragging his thoughts with them. Am I transforming, he wondered. Only if you answer a question. What does the man owe to his fellows? Acceptance, he replied to himself like an echo. Then you will be like a set square and you will redraw borders.
(Translated by Ecaterina Bucovanu / 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. 
