Son, how was school? What do you want to be when you grow up? The father thought that he'd like to ask him. Father, I've learned how dazzling the colours of the ocean are, when the sun adds a golden glow to it but also when it mirrors the stormy, dark clouds. Don't be afraid to look me in the eye, answered the father. You'll see the colours of your own soul. The child was beaming between heavy breaths, staring blindly at the ceiling in the father's direction. The parents entered the room seven minutes later to turn off the machines.
(Translated by Ioana Ștefan / 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. 
