He was tired, hungry and thirsty after his long journey. He fell down by the lake, laid his hands on the shore and stretched his lips. Then he saw him. On the other side of the water, a man was watching him. He looked like him. But he was younger. Next to the first face appeared another. Then another and another. They looked familiar, though he didn't know where to get them. As the lake filled with faces, they started to speak to him. Silent, as if he were lurking beyond a wall of glass. Only then did he feel the water between his fingers and the fish and the algae sticking to his body.
(Translated by Luciana-Maria Buruiană / 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. 
