He hadn't always felt this way. It wasn't until he grew up that he realized there was a him inside her. He understood, at once, that he couldn't get used to the shell he was wearing. It was only a burden to himself and a mask for others. He knew he had to take the plunge, and he had the courage to change things. More than that, he knew that the change would make him fly, see the world in colour, and get him out of his dull life of a crawling thing. So on the first warm day in May, the caterpillar shed its coat and turned into a butterfly.
(Translated by Camelia Diaconu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by prof. Eliana Ionoaia / 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. 
