I drank my coffee at my desk, like a metronome, at exactly 9 o'clock every day. The terrace overlooked Central Park and it was a delight to see the morning bustle from the 27th floor. I'd even brought my professional binoculars to intuit their stories. That's how I saw her feeding the pigeons. It was love at first sight. I sprang to the elevator driven by an insane desire to meet her. The whole thing lasted 3 minutes and 47 seconds. She wasn't there anymore. I sighed. In five minutes I had a meeting. She was standing in front of the elevator. What floor, sir?
(Translated by Alina-Mihaela Burciu / 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 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. 
