How much would you pay for another day?, the old man asked the child. Nothing, because I have as many days as I have smiles. How much would you pay for another day?, he asked him again, when the child was already a
grown-up man. Maybe I would give a penny or maybe less, because now I have a few days left. How much would you pay for another day?, he asked again, when he was on his deathbed. I would give you, old man, all the pearls in the oceans, and I would give you all the gold on Earth, even all the stars I see in the sky. Never play with time.
(Translated by Diana Stănescu / 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. 
