I'm watching him while sipping my drink - he's trying to convince her of something, she gets up all furious and leaves. Now he orders a spirit, doesn't see or hear anything around him as he watches the wedding band she'd left on the counter, then he orders another round. I slide into the empty seat next to him, I'd like for him to be my client but his eyes, his hunched back make me want to cover up my breasts, and suddenly I wish I were monogamous and could take him out of this smoky lounge. Glasses clink on as the two of us walk out, leaving our shadows behind us on the sidewalk.
(Translated by Carla Bețianu / 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 April 2023, the group has 11,000 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. 
