Christmas was coming. He would've wanted to buy her a warm coat, with Molton lining, and a pair of shoes. The old coat was
moth-eaten and the boots would get soaking wet from wear. He was working overtime, but with the mortgage on the house and furniture, and with all the children's necessities, he wasn't able to save some money. And while he was walking miserable, knotting his face from worries and his body freezing from cold, he saw a crumpled bill. Suspicious, he bent down and grabbed it. Bălcescule, we have a coat, he told himself and shoved it into his pocket.
(Translated by Tania Diniță / 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 July 2022, the group has 8,750 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. 
