Thirty three sakura festivals and a crimson autumn, whispered the old man who told the fortune to the Giongheishas, in exchange for udon noodles, which he slurped loudly. Jade Guise looked at her reflection in the mirror. Thirty three springs had already passed, but she was still the tea house guests' favorite. She noticed, raised next to her porcelain cheeks as for a last dance, a chimono sleeve. Alongside pain, a noh mask had appeared in the mirror. The maple leaves had start ed painting the streets red.
(Translated by Daniela-Andreea Gugescu / 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. 
