You undo my tie, I open with a button. I put two pawns forward just for a whisper of a touch on your back. Silence. Tender looks. Tick tock, tick tock. You have 96 seconds to make your next move. You castle the queen. I have 69 heartbeats and an inspiration to attack your queen. Your breath catches when you see me move my knight hastily. It seems to be a tie. I let my guard down. Queen's Gambit. What white bishop? What black queen. Even Imré is silent. I propose a bed, but you parry. Check.
(Translated by Bianca-Maria Ciucașu / 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. 
