At Sunday church service, Grigorina wondered at Safta's figure: How did you manage to lose so much weight? Well, I started a kiwi diet, Safta boasted. Mother Rica, the bell ringer's wife, takes notice: Who is it, dear, Vivi? No, she was talking about kiwi, an exotic fruit. Erotic film? God forbid. No, dear, I'm not watching, I'm an old woman. Well, can't you hear? She was talking about the kiwi, that long, hairy fruit. How? Lungu's is gay? I knew, damn it. The world's turned upside down.
(Translated by Alina-Dorina Nicolae / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / 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 June 2023, the group has 11,430 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. 
