Tea

Paul Dârvariu
I have no idea why they called our parties by that name, as we only drank beer and vodka. I remember one thrown by Bebe. Gogu brought the girls with his father's Trabant car. There must not have been enough room for the one meant for me, because she showed up later, on her own. I couldn't get a good look at her face in the candlelight, but we danced wrapped in each other's arms all night. We fell asleep together tangled on the floor. In the light of dawn, I finally managed to see her properly. I freaked out so bad, I fled the scene wearing one men's shoe and the other women's.

Arthur Ianoși
They meant for her to be a boy, but fate had other plans. From the shorts with suspenders that she wore proudly, the bruises on her legs, climbing the trees in Floreasca, being an exemplary pupil and student, to becoming a party member and then the host of a vaguely philosophical TV show, I mean, she was basically serving tea to the guests - Marina, the girl who inspired Romania's Surprise Fairy^[1], worked hard. Even now, she still feeds on the glory of past times, when Victoraș carried the letter sacks and she put the kettle on so the tea would be ready by five o'clock.
Titela Durnea
I could not make out its shape through the translucent glass. Yet I had that feeling as though: I've known it forever, I needed no validation, forms, or confirmations. So, without further hesistation, I quickly pulled the stopper and slipped inside. I slowly trickled down the walls, circling the liquid, which instinctively took the shape of its vessel, under its own weight. I sank beneath, whispering it my sweet desire. And so we blended - jasmine and honey - bringing the now hot water to a state of perfection.  

(Translated by Diana Gabriela Radu / 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.