Today, an 18-year-old kid told me he hasn't done anything memorable with his life so far. I laughed. Back then, I just wanted what I wrote in the slam book to be like that. Otherwise, I would have preferred to forget more than to remember. In the evening, I pampered my body and thanked it for bringing me here despite its imperfections. Last year, people younger than me died. I don't know what memorable things they left behind or where they went. I only know that today it doesn't matter that you haven't reached anywhere; what's memorable is the fact that you remained. Alive.
(Translated by Lorina Xiaoyu Hou / 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. 
