The day they moved in together, they ran into their neighbor Geta, a 70 year old woman, on the stairs; she was wearing a red coat and a felt hat with purple flowers. I think it's inappropriate to dress like that at such an elderly age, he remarked with disdain. It's actually very cool, you're just mean and close-minded, she replied. That was their first fight. Many more followed - about politics, money, relatives, and dirty dishes. Three years later, when they broke up, she thought: I cannot grow old next to some guy who'll think I'm weird for wearing red.
(Translated by Bianca Ioana Prisecaru / 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. 
