Anime

Ruxandra Comșa
I'm gouging my eyes out. I put them away. And he takes them out too. Blind, we love each other more. My body trembles, this body, each time another, at the thought that he recognizes me. He's sniffing me. You're fire, he says, and unbraids my nine tails. I run my palms over his rough skin, like a map, and lightheaded, I feel his femoral pulse under my fingers. I'm too old for your games. When I bite, I already know I've been the one bitten. I know what kind of fox you are, he says, and cuts off eight of my tails. From now on we'll do as I say, Kitsune.

Ana-Maria Butuza
Sensei[1] Yamada slowly eats his rice noodles with his two bamboo chopsticks and sips his clear soup from a porcelain bowl. He strokes his thin, white moustache as he meditates for a long time over the peace of the soul. A fly, however, spoils his positive qi and Sensei calmly catches it between the two chopsticks. He looks it straight in the eye with the wisdom of his 80 years and throws it towards the ceiling: in the little time I have left, I want to enjoy the body of a young woman and the fly descends transformed into a geisha. Tavi Tone
I'm just saying, if the blind guy got to Brăila[1], why can't I get to Otaku in Tokyo? I bought my plane ticket almost a year ahead and waited expectantly for the cherry season. But when I saw this manga goddess, I don't know how to tell you but my view got suddenly coloured, reality increased, what the heck, I was seeing cartoons. I was stuck in Animatrix, with a banana peel in my hand, as if struck by lightning. She took it from me, put it in a bag and smiled. I realized instantly that I had to learn Japanese.
(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.