Everyone laughed at him, he was so small, such a runt, his glasses fogged up all the time, his two sizes bigger trousers taken from his brother and pinned with safety pins, a school bag with small holes from cigarette butts and a Gavroche cap older than history itself. During the breaks, they would knock him around, bullying him and poking him with pencil tips, freshly sharpened. Look at your small and snub nose, bet your weenie is just as small. They dragged him to the bathroom where the boys had a measuring contest. They pulled his pants down. They all fainted.
(Translated by Tania Diniță / 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. 
