They were walking next to their mother while begging her to get them each an ice cream cone. After much begging, the children eventually received their ice cream. That very evening, the woman had no bread to put on the table. She tried explaining to her husband that the money was spent on ice cream, but it was to no avail, she still got slapped across the face. The eldest witnessed the whole ordeal. He took his siblings to the lake where people throw coins and make all kinds of wishes. Now they're each sitting by the shore with a magnet tied to rope, fishing for some coins so that they can afford to buy a loaf of bread.
(Translated by Marta Fulga / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by conf. dr. Daria Protopopescu / Edited 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 October 2022, the group has 9,400 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. 
