Manda's land is better than that of many in the village. Her corn matures the first and that's all the little loafers want. They lurk around to steal her corn and roast it on burning coals. Manda has no allies, she only has Robert in the city and some chickens in the barn, and they don't eat grains, they don't lay eggs and Robert only comes by when he knows the chickens have produced enough. His mother waits for him, but he doesn't come often and he doesn't like leaving with his hand empty, so Manda watches the cornfield, it's her only chance at having Robert visit more regularly.
(Translated by Diana Mîndruță-Tănăsescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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. 
