In a parallel world, we would have stayed together. I would have proposed to you, right after the college admission exam, and you would have said YES. What a great match. In our sophomore year, you would have given birth. By now, Ilinca would be in her early thirties, settled down, and we would be enjoying our two grandchildren, Matei and Radu. In fact, you married Virgil, gave birth to Maria, divorced, remarried Cristi and settled in Canada. I stayed here, in a parallel world. Parallel to yours.
(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. 
