When I came out of school, it was raining. My classmate took a bag out of his backpack, covered his head with it and called me to his side, offering to walk me home. Our heads were protected, our hearts not so much. He said he wanted to hold my hand. I didn't let him. When we reached the gate, he said he wanted to kiss me. No way, I said. Because I didn't know how to tell him I loved him, I ran. I came across him 20 years later, on a rainy day. I jumped into his arms and wanted to give him everything. He gave me an umbrella.
(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. 
