I ranked first in a competition with 40 million participants. I never rush the process. Not that I'm lazy, but what's the big deal about winning a race against a bunch of dummies? Look, even now, I let them cram like fools into that damn conveyor. At the starting signal, I entered the tunnel last. I hid in a nook and waited for everyone to come back, tails between their legs. Only then did I come out and cross the finish line alone. Why would they hold the award ceremony 9 months later?
(Translated by Raluca Ioana Crucerescu / 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 November 2022, the group has 9,580 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. 
