Andrei squinted. The header was clean, formatted in Arial, with neatly aligned tables for the parties' data, the vehicle's chassis number (U1SKSBNDG12345678), the price, and the place of signing: mun. Chișinău, MD . It even had the little numbered clauses—Art. 1, Art. 2—like a real legal template someone had downloaded from a government portal and filled in with care.

He smiled, crumpled the receipt for the bus fare home, and walked toward the Skoda dealer. Tomorrow, he would download the same template again—as a buyer this time.

Victor chuckled, pulling a folded, slightly crumpled document from his glove compartment. "I'm not a 'napkin guy.' Look— contract de vânzare-cumpărare auto model word md ."

Victor looked at the signed contract. The ink was still wet. Andrei was already reaching for the keys.

"Four thousand," Andrei countered. "And only if you have all the papers. I mean all of them. Last time, I bought a Volkswagen and the guy handed me a napkin with a signature."

"It's done," Victor said into the phone, then hung up.

His phone buzzed. A potential buyer: Andrei, a twitchy-eyed student from the Technical University.

They filled it out on the trunk of the Logan. Victor wrote his IDNP (2001604123456). Andrei wrote his. They listed the vehicle's flaws: "zgârieturi pe portiera dreaptă față, uzură normală."

The sky over Chișinău was a bruised purple as Victor wiped the grease from his hands. His Dacia Logan, a faithful 2008 workhorse, had finally coughed its last. The engine block was cracked. He needed it gone by the weekend to afford the down payment on a used Skoda from the lot on Ștefan cel Mare.

As the Logan sputtered away (Andrei had misjudged the crack in the engine block by a mile), Victor leaned against a lamppost and counted the money. Four thousand lei. It wasn't a fortune. But the contract—clean, digital, local—had been worth every wasted minute of formatting at 2 AM. In a country where a handshake could evaporate like summer rain on the Bic River, a proper contract de vânzare-cumpărare auto model word md was the closest thing to iron.

"Five thousand lei," Victor said, crossing his arms.