Her mother decided on her studies, her clothes, her friends and parties. Her father got her bike ready, her skates and her trips. They spoke to her for hours about everything, they filled her eyes and soul with pictures of those long-awaited moments. At night she was alone with the stars and they were the only ones who heard her wish: to get rid of the disease and to breathe slowly while running among poppies. That's all. In the morning she woke up pinned by the same strings of helplessness, but she still smiled when her parents talked about a life that could no longer be hers.
(Translated by Ruxandra Adriana Dodoiu / 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. 
