Anime

Elena Fermuș
She drew a mother with the pencil on the paper. That's what the little girl with the eyes like the sky did before she fell asleep. She'd ruffle her hair, ruffle her dress and draw. As best her little hand could. Then she'd take the paper and touch it to the icon of Jesus Christ. She had heard from the grown-ups that miracles begin there. The drawing came to life. The mother arranged her tattered dress and combed her tousled hair. The little girl closed herselfinside her soul. And out of the skies of her eyes it began to rain gently. A rain of memories. Tomorrow she will draw a daddy.

Arthur Ianoși
Osamu had been living for some time in an emotional concubinage with drawing and his passion for insects. When Fumiko and Yutaka fell asleep, the boy who rejected his adolescence would perch atop the tree behind the house and imagine becoming Osaka's greatest Hokage[1]. He would sit there for hours, contemplating the sky and drawing all sorts of characters who would later become his friends. A Shinto priest who wanted to commit seppuku[2] with just a toothpick, or a kid who could shoot clouds with a bicycle full of light bulbs. I call you Astro Boy.
Gabriela Rus
Haruka waits in line in the kombini[1], as she does every morning. People, lined up like ants, buy coffee and a treat for later. Today the cashier is shaped like a huge mug, into which each customer pours their words. The drink in the cup is coloured differently each time. A silent man greets her with half a mouthful and a greyish-curly moul appears. Haruka smiles, wishes him a nice day. The drink turns canary yellow. Outside, two old men, he a white wolf, she a fox, chuckle softly on their way home.
(Translated by Andreea Cristina Moise / 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 December 2023, the group has 12,210 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.