I discovered him a while ago. The same me but from another world. I'm talking to him. He looks at me. Sometimes he answers. We end up having conversations for hours. We talk about ordinary things, philosophize, give each other advice. I want to help him become independent, not just a carbon copy of me. He doesn't have to imitate me, even in the smallest gestures. Those around me try to convince me that this isn't so. That he's just a mirror, like all the others here in the mental asylum. But I know I'm right.
(Translated by Cătălina Colibaba / 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 June 2022, the group has 8,500 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. 
