They sat down on the sand and looked towards the sea's passion. They knew they could no longer see each other, so they uttered dull words. We are getting old, they told themselves. We are no longer at the mercy of fate. Then they fell silent, and shortly after they accidentally touched each other's hands. Their clenched fingers did not understand the taste of reason.You cannot overcome the screech of your flesh as you overcome your mind, but we are masters of others' happiness, they told themselves. They turned their gaze to the moon, but couldn't let go of their palms. They became one with the night.
(Translated by Cătălina Colibaba / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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. 
