It was only when he arrived in front of the house that he realized it was missing from him and he couldn't rest until he searched for it everywhere. He rummaged through every place he remembered going to. It wasn't at the railway, much less in the flea market where he earned his living by selling knickknacks, it was as if the ground had swallowed it. It was past midnight when tired of searching he abandoned all hope and headed home. Stepping underneath the faint light of the lamppost at the corner of the street, he saw it following him as usual. He exhaled in relief. He wasn't alone anymore.
(Translated by Jessica-Polixenia-Cristiana Copilaș / 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. 
