I shyly enter and take a seat at the first desk. The one next to the teacher's. He didn't expect me, because I didn't go yesterday and hung up the phone. He handed me out the stack of subject sheets. Please share them, you look more rested than me. I touch his hand and smile. Yes, I look so. My classmates are writing, I am drawing and watching him out of the corner of my eye. I won't pass anyway. He knows what power he has when he stares at me like that. I feel tingling under my skin, warm, wet. The school bell rings. I got startled and drew my knees together. Pf, what a synch.
Ania Vilal
Time is up, please return to the main session. I tap the screen a few times, nothing. The robot relentlessly repeats the same words. A nasty thought occurs to me and I blow over the screen. It unlocks and I am on the home page of sex change automat. I pick "male" again and start choosing my favourite features. I hesitate like last time at the size of my package. It can't be big and long, I have to choose one of the options. Seconds, minutes, years pass. Time is up, please return to the main session.
Octavian Neculai
If you miss any more seminars, you will fail the course. I looked at him, with a little smirk, and told myself that I can just take the resit in another session. Don't you think I'll let you take it in the summer. Of course I didn't attend the summer session. After a month on May 2nd, I returned to Bucharest and started studying for the resit following in the autumn. If you don't get a 10, I'll make you repeat the year, the teacher said. I would have lost my scholarship. Maybe that's why I didn't like the autumn sessions. It's the last chance.
(Translated by Andreea Ciubuc / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.