Tea

Laura Stanciu
This is not how you do it, grandma. We can't pour boiling water over tea. It's like burning a person alive. Whatever you say, Minodora, dear. That's just how I've made linden blossom tea and chamomile tea all my life, and I have never burned anyone. Okay, it's just that now we do things differently. Look, we heat the water up to 80 degrees, we leave the leaves for three minutes, we cover the cups and wait in silence. After a moment, grandmother could no longer hold back. Minodora, the cabbage rolls, the piftie[1] and the borș[2] take me half a day. I wouldn't be able to keep quiet for that long even if I did them all by myself.
Marian Bircea
The only remarkable event to come out of the 89' Revolution in Buzău was the unequal yet victorious confrontation between the pretzel maker Marcel, a man good at everything but without a high school diploma, and a pack of strays that used to terrorize the streets of Simileasca, an unequal battle between the cigarettes and tea in thermos carrier and the imaginary revolutionaries. With the skill of a true rat baker, Marcel scalded the fanged terrorists with hot tea. That is why he now has a diploma for special merits and for dillydallying.

Ana-Maria Butuza
If it weren't for the drizzle, she would have taken the kids outside. What are we doing today? A high-pitched voice asked, and the young lady's eyes narrowed for a second. You'll write down what I dictate, she said quietly. What's wrong Tudor, why aren't you drinking your tea? Did you write everything down? Yes, the small voices responded in chorus. Good, now tell me where the hyphen should be placed and why. Their tiny hands were swinging about eagerly in the air. All of them seemed to know the answer, only in the last row a boy was looking absently out the window. You don't know? The young lady asked him. I do, but I don't like tea.

(Translated by Alina-Alexandra Șovar / 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 January 2025, the group has 13,600 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, Monica Aldea, and Vlad Mușat. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)

Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale.