After We Met

Marian Bircea
We became good friends, you introduced me to your sister whom I fell head over heels for. Fate wanted us to box in the semi-final. You were stronger, I was more technical, she was in the audience. I didn't want to hit you, you didn't want to beat me, in the third round we kept going around the ring in an embrace, and we both whispered at the same time: KO me. The referee disqualified us for noncombat, the audience booed us. We stayed sworn friends. I didn't become your brother-in-law. Your sister yelled at us. Wussies. And then she got into a relationship with a ballet dancer.

Beatrice Chivu
In the infinite ocean, the two whales were staring at each other. They knew that they were flesh and blood even if they hadn't seen each other in a long time. The Pacific current separated them. The daughter's departure was like a harpoon to the heart for the mother. They celebrated by touching each other's wings lovingly, as they did in the beginning when she was small, swimming for the first time under her mother's vigilant eye. Look mom, there is your other Miracle, she said, pointing in the distance. It's true, she did you wrong, but at least give her a smile from a distance, so she can feel that you see her.

Camil Popescu
When we met, I headbutted him. Actually, that's how we met. He didn't have time to have a reaction, because a knee to the stomach followed after that. I picked up a plank from the ground and snapped it on his back. He fell dead. Don't have the impression that this was all for nothing. He deserved it. I turned him to face me, to make sure that he never forgets me and to threaten him: tell me, will you ever do that again? That's when I realised that he wasn't the one I was looking for. I got angry and kicked him in the nuts, then I asked what his name was. He didn't say anything. I apologised. I hope he heard me.

(Translated by Cristina-Paula Grosu / 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 May 2024, the group has 13,000 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.