All the handsome men were swimming in the sea; there is no sign of them, at least not until the horizon. She was singing childishly, digging a hole in the sand with her fingernails, on the deserted and desolate beach under the autumn wind. Why are you playing, he asked her. She had thin shoulders and looked frail under the overly baggy men's sweater. I am the only one left, she cried, amazed that he couldn't get it, looking past him as if she didn't see him. But where are the handsome men? Fortune smiled on them, she laughed madly, the sea will drag them somewhere, but I'm still born on the 13
th.
(Translated by Andreea Laura Stanca / 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. 
