We have plenty of days, come and get days after, shouted the hawker who appeared out of nowhere in the town. The butcher and the baker rushed out to buy days - they were not poor, they could buy many - quickly calculating how much more they would earn, how many sliced cows, how many loaves sold. The crowd kept swelling, gathering and swarming, the hawker gave the days, and he threw the money into a bottomless pocket and grinned, only the gaunt old beggar who's been sitting for ages at the church door whispered: don't forget the days after, son. Where are the days after?
(Translated by Andreea-Daniela Vasilache / 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. 
