Maia, Vlad's ex-girlfriend, showed up on their first date with an umbrella. It was a sunny day. He was surprised. Maybe it will rain later in the evening, she told him. Then, every time they saw each other, Maia showed up with the umbrella. She wouldn't let go of the umbrella not even when there were 40°C outside. Not even when she went to the bathroom in the restaurant. You're afraid of getting rained on in there, Vlad joked. Every time she came back, she was more relaxed and in a much better mood. One night, when she quickly unscrewed the umbrella handle in front of him, Vlad finally understood.
(Translated by Andreea Ciubuc / 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. 
