I had never seen hear wear a hat until today. She covered her head with shawls hand-stitched during the summer, under the yard's elm tree. Her long and wavy hair, neatly tied up in a top bun, was her pride. Her sweet face smiled gleefully. She took my hand and took me slowly towards the kitchen. She lit the lamp, sat down on the bench and sighed. From the darkness, an envelope of money and a receipt signed with X jumped at me. She had sold her hair. Her daughter will be able to learn, she will know the light.
(Translated by Diana Pașcanu / 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. 
