I sit by myself on a bench and I think about all of my failed relationships. I cry. A stranger sits next to me and tells me he can make me happy. How? I ask. Have a coffee with me, he said. There were men who promised me diamonds, the moon and the stars, and you think you can win me over with some ground beans? Ok, I said. He took my hand and we got in his car. He stopped after 1.500 kilometres or so. Now I'm drinking a cappuccino in a villa in Tuscany, with the most beautiful man in the world. His name is Francesco.
(Translated by Ruxandra Adriana Dodoiu / 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. 
