Ikigai

Iulia Biro
He would have liked to be a shepherd. To wear the same clothes all year round, doze off several times a day, stare into the distance, and not talk. Pressured by his family, he went to school, managed to have a family, then a second one after the divorce, but his eyes and mind kept drifting toward the pastures on the hills. Now he worked for a Japanese corporation. Every day he woke up knowing he was getting closer to the day when no one would tolerate his detachment anymore, they'd leave him alone, and he could finally buy some sheep and, oh, live the life he truly wanted.
 
Cristina Daniela Dumitru-Pascal
She woke up scared because he wasn't beside her. She searched the house. Then she felt a sunbeam playing. She remembered-it was spring. She put the coffee on the stove. Opened the windows and breathed in the scent of fresh green. Just like when they met. He had brought her a hyacinth. Out of nervousness, he broke its stem. She took it and tucked it behind her ear. Then she kissed him. They were 15. She filled the cups and went outside. Sat on the bench, placed his cup next to her, sipped the coffee, and smiled. "It's just the way you like it," she said, looking at the photo on the grave.
 
 Vlad Mușat
Mrs. Sanyu's story made me leave the house after 33 days. The former kindergarten teacher had been alone since she was 48, when her husband died in a car accident. She had no children, and her parents had died when she was young. Cats were the only beings that soothed her loneliness. Fragments of her journal, found by the police, made it into the newspapers. Mrs. Sanyu felt her end was near and that she'd be found much too late. With her last strength, she covered her body with the contents of a can of tuna.

(Translated by Miruna-Camelia Baicu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by prof. dr. Nadina Vișan, coordinator of the translations / Edited 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 April 2025, the group has 13,740 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.