One coffee. Another 50 bani for cream. Thanks, just plain hot bitter. As you wish. In the corner of the bar I let the hot steam wake me up, where I can imagine the rhythm of jazz with my shoulders slumped. Nobody comes, nobody leaves, the bartender's calm. In my iris he enters for a moment, then exits, I get up and order another coffee, with lots of cream and five lei kisses. I drink it passionately with the barista in the sap. The jukebox tosses me back my coins and plays the song Nothing's real. I smile from under my sweet white moustache.
(Translated by Anca Maria Florea / 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. 
