I want to be like my mother. I mean, nothing. What do you mean, nothing? I ask the little girl with curly hair who sat down next to my sun chair as if we had known each other for a lifetime. Well, you know how cool it is to be nothing? You stay home all day, you cook, you watch soap operas, the man goes to work, that's what Dad does, all day he goes round the country to work to get us money so Mum can buy me stuff. I don't even have to worry about school results, 'cause to be nothing, you don't need much schooling, you know? What do you want to be when you grow up?
(Translated by Andreea Theodora Drăgan / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan / 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. 
