It started on a Thursday, not long before midnight, exactly 63 days and 11 hours ago. Here, in Nucondo, time flows differently. I assume the Earth is rotating slower, tired by the agitation from the valley. Days turn into years, hours into months. Last night Gabo came to me in a dream. Hombre, he said, remember that you only grow old when you stop loving. I can't wait to dream about him again. I'll ask him: Master, should I send more roses, or leave them to wither in the vase?
(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. 
