They lived on the same small street, but they had never met. Her yard smelled like forget-me-nots and acacia. His yard, like cypress and freesias. Every day when she went out the gate, he would go in. When his small house was full of light, hers was dark. She dreamt of love budding at long last while he buried another love's shadow. Their worlds flowed through the same time but in opposite directions. Until that morning when he hesitated in front of the gate for a brief moment. Their eyes met, for eternity. Threads growing from hearts.
(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. 
