Saturnino el sereno from Valencia, passed every night by the fishermen's houses in Alboraya to count the knots on the ropes hanging from the doorknobs. Here there are three, José has four, so I have a few hours left before I wake them up. He'd lit the lanterns and was waiting for the last of the partygoers to reach their homes, knowing they would get their keys mixed up. He knew best the sound of the night, the footsteps of the neighbours and the tart waiting for a few pesetas at the door of the pub. He looks at the watch and shouts melodiously, it's one o'clock and the weather is calm.
(Translated by Anca Cristina Georgiana Mihai / 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. 
