The book was new and thick. Both aspects delighted him-both the smell of ink relatively fresh off the printing press, and the fact that he would read something with some weight. It would, at least, have physical weight. But he knew he wouldn't be disappointed, thanks to the reputation of the writer, about whom he didn't know much, but whose name was enough for him. He hated bookstores, but not enough. He never came out of them empty-handed, but this time he really had crossed the line. He was palming the huge stack of pages wondering what was beyond the last book cover?
(Translated by Elena Patricia Măroiu / 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 February 2023, the group has 10,500 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. 
