Funny, isn't it? Love. It comes in threes, yeah. We've been indifferent toward each other, we've loved each other, we've hated each other. We've experienced all three. There was a time for all of them. A time when we couldn't breathe out of love. A time when I noticed your flaws. And I hated you because there were many. Like fleas on a dog. And there came a time when you didn't count. But all this time showed me that disappointments do pass. That you heal from them, that they don't hurt anymore. That only the joy of love remains in life. If only I had more love. At least every three lifetimes.
(Translated by Ana-Maria Batog / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / 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 May 2023, the group has 11,260 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. 
