An alien has descended among us, eager to learn about humans. He traced a line on the ground and told us: Happy people stand on the left, unhappy people on the right. One by one, people took their places where they felt they belonged. I fell into thought. I realize that at times I have moments of sublime happiness, but then I experience painful falls. I know I enjoy life when I drink my coffee in the garden, and I hate it when we argue. I had no clue which side to choose, so I chose to sit on both sides.
(Translated by Cosmina-Florentina Ciobanu / 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. 
