With trepidation, she crept into the shop. The hatter looked at her briefly. Which should it be? The purple one with roses. That is expensive, it arrived from Paris. I have money, she said quickly, pushing away a thought. Maybe you do, but your husband has forbidden me to sell you any. That's the last one, she said in a choked voice. That's what you said last time, too. I promise, she insisted. Shaking his head, the man packed her hat into the round box. At home she put it in the closet in line with the others. One for each night her husband shared her with another.
(Translated by Oana Georgiana Minea / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 January 2023, the group has 10,220 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. 
