Maria and Dan are two meritorious young people. Their tremendous success in school competitions has brought them fame in school. Maria has no financial means. She has three brothers. Dan lives in a two-story villa with a swimming pool. He eats dinner alone. Maria studies by the candlelight in the godforsaken little shack on the town outskirts. Dan uses the latest gadgets. Maria wears her sister's used pinafore. Dan wears Hugo jackets. Today is the high school graduation. Dan has a bouquet of orchids. Maria has dreams. Period.
(Translated by Camelia Diaconu / 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 September 2022, the group has 9,250 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. 
