Having just arrived from the work trip, my wife gives me the updates on what happened in my absence. All well and good, except that my son got otitis. I'm going to see how he's feeling. I find him in the middle of the room, surrounded by a pile of toys. With a sad look, he shows me the bumps behind his ears. Close the door, dad, I don't want to sit in the draft, he tells me. I close the door and ask him: What happened to you child, did you get otitis? Eh, answer me very seriously, it would have been good. But instead of a tit I have two tidies, can't you see?
(Translated by Alin-Marian Mărgescu / 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. 
