A coffee, I ask the kid behind the counter, instantly struck with confusion, followed by a string of lattes and syrups that improve the quality of coffee, automatically of life. He says that espresso or ristretto might be close to my tutancamonic requirement. I give up and ask for the tea options, Darjeeling, Ceylon and some more that refused to enter my memory. A glass of water, then, the alkaline one, obviously. I drink it with the speed of the shot and return to my galaxy, where water is drunk from the tap and there is still mint and coffee at the kettle.
(Translated by Cătălina Colibaba / 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. 
