His father had promised him that they would go fishing at night, so the boy, with anticipation in his heart, waited for the signal to leave. With the fishing rods prepared in advance and the net forgotten in the boat, they rowed in silence on the mirror of the water in which the Moon and the stars bathed. He looked at his father's calloused hands on the fishing rod, then stroked the wet surface with his small fingers. He made a decision. He threw the net slowly, carefully and with desire. Five of the sky's stars got caught in the net. He gazed for a long time at the coveted treasure. His father smiled at him. No one before had ever caught a star.
(Translated by Andreea Teodorescu-Colciu / 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. 
