The words stuck in his throat and he forgot to hit the record button. After all it's a stupid thing, he thought. If he didn't have the courage to say it to her face, there's no point in this invention with the voice print. She won't believe him anyway. And yet, maybe it's worth trying to surprise her. He read again the instructions on the website where he was to send the audio message that would be converted into a sound wave and then engraved on a locket. I am ready to die for you, he said. If you got the locket, it means I'm dead.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Mușetescu / 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. 
