The smell of a sleeping baby can cure anything. Even this one day when my dad didn't answer my calls. I knew it. I just knew it wasn't right. I'm sorry, dad, I didn't come sooner, I love you. I love you too, he said. One ambulance, dozens of calls, then a second. I have to finish writing a comic moment about motherhood by tomorrow and act it out. I'm cuddling next to the kids. I breathe in. What a wonder childhood is. It cures everything. Even this day that ended in a cliffhanger.
(Translated by Adrian-George Ilinca / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected 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. 
