Irregular heartbeats, lumps in my throat and ephemerals in my stomach had put up a united front against me. I was walking on clouds, blindfolded, with the confidence of a sherpa who had treaded this path both in the light and in the dark, but I felt that I was losing my identity every time she took my hand to show me what I left behind. I loved her deeply and exuded her warmth through all my pores. I was afraid to tell her everything I feel. What if she doesn't feel the same way? What if she gets scared? What if. When I fell into the void, she caught me and told me I was talking in my sleep. I love you too.
(Translated by Ecaterina Bucovanu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 March 2023, the group has 10,790 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, Luchian Abel, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
