Just like in a dream, I wake up in a gloomy, brightly lit hallway. I enter the first room. Several people repeatedly say in front of mirrors: You can do anything if you want to. I exit and enter the second room. Someone is talking without interruption; nothing makes sense, but the others listen fascinated. I arrive in the third room. Here other people sit idly, in a remarkable silence. I return to the hallway and realize I am at a personal development seminar. Now I can see the poster: how to become a genius in 3 steps. Well, thanks, I already am one.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Batog / 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. 
