I didn't even know where to begin, because no one gave me a user manual. You came well packed, with foil with protection bubbles on your soul, in pieces, some rather whole, others rather chipped, I guess someone else used you before, but he got bored of grey quickly and gave you back. I opened you, I put the fallen sawdust on the dustpan and I tried to put your bolts in their place. You're still a little bit off centre, but look how good you look into my light. I have a burnt filament as well, it's fine.
(Translated by Ema-Teodora Rădulescu / 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 August 2022, the group has 9,000 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. 
