Do you want to see the stars in the daytime, the kid asked me. Yes, I replied, pretending not to know the trick. Close your eyes, she said mysteriously. Now press them as hard as you can, she said, in a swallow's voice. Do you see them, she asked, giggling. Yes, yes, I answered, there are many. That's good, she murmured, like a fresh spring, fed with melted snow. Now you can open your eyes, I heard as if in a dream, and in the pearly light that filled all the sky beneath my eyelids, I met myself, smiling shrewishly, like a little witch.
(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. 
