He was world chess champion. His mind had recorded every game ever played. When he met her at a game, he first felt something that wasn't reason. He quickly defeated all his opponents, kept her in front of him, trying anything to prolong the game. He avoided eliminating her pieces, but he was reluctant to let her win, he wanted the game to go on forever. He followed her eyes and wondered if he'd make it to bed. Unsure, he decided to take it all as a game of chess, anticipated the future, won and she remained a stranger to him.
(Translated by Luciana-Maria Buruiană / 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. 
