It's past midnight, but I got to tell you, you're an adult now. The story about your mother is old. If I have stayed, it was out of love for you children. Now that you're grown up, I'll go my own way, trying for a love I didn't find here. No one's to blame, it just didn't work out. It never has. Don't be upset, I'll still be your father. Maybe even better, because I'll feel unshackled. And I deserve to fulfill my dreams too. While I still can, while I still live. Because life isn't contemplated, life happens.
(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. 
