I get out of the house bundled up in regrets and disappointments. You fool, I always tell you to have no expectations. Ever. From nothing and nobody. I speed up. Outside it grows dark. It's nice somehow, this fog that covers up the pain. I speed up. Tears fall. At one point I start running. Darkness and tears run after me. Cold. I run as days grow shorter and nights grow longer. Winter. I can see myself coming from the other end of the world. Green. Alive. I get inside the house. I love you, you fool. Life, reloaded.
(Translated by Carla Bețianu / 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. 
