I was smothering the departure with tears, the scales of the old apothecary fell up on one side, he was screaming for help, the mandrake was going to spill through the window, on the road, and kids would get it on their shoes and take it into their homes, a bird flew into the window, what day is it, Thursday, and I watched the whole disaster unravel outside, and I told myself that I could never do that to my world, I got up and gave him a call, the world is not ending, my dear, but it is much more beautiful with us, he started making coffee and smiled at me: help me understand, how could you believe that it would end?
(Translated by Adelina-Maria Mănăilescu / 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 December 2022, the group has 9,880 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. 
