Chapter Text
“Eri’s Rewind quirk works on more than just the cellular level of living organisms,” the doctor tells Satoru, who holds a clinging Eri close to his chest.
There’s a clock on the wall in the shape of a cat, that has a tail that swings from side to side with each tick of the clock hand. It’s a black and white cat, so it doesn’t look very much like Meow, but Eri stares at it anyway.
“I figured as much,” Satoru admits, not sounding terribly surprised. Eri looks away from the clock and buries her face into his sweater. It smells like him. It smells like home. “It’s a temporal quirk, isn’t it? Which means it also has the potential to be a spatial quirk as well.”
The doctor nods. His next words come out haltingly; “This is one of the most powerful quirks I’ve ever seen. That it’s only confined to living organisms is merely a matter of time and circumstances. My theory is that, given a long enough incubation period, it could possibly tear apart the fabric of dimensions as we know it.”
Most of this goes way over Eri’s head. She’s small and scared and doesn’t want to deal with any of it. She knows she promised Satoru she’d see a doctor to make sure she’s not sick and stuff, but she still feels wary about the idea of people talking about her— and more specifically, her quirk. The whole thing sounds so terribly scary, even what little of it she understands. But Eri already knew this about herself.
Her quirk is terrifying.
Her quirk is a curse.
But Satoru just gives a thoughtful hum, rubbing her back. “That sounds about right. But like you said, it will take time for it to get that strong. And it’s possible Eri never grows strong enough to manifest it. You said she had some underlying issues from malnutrition, right?”
He doesn’t sound very scared at all. In fact, he sounds rather droll about the whole matter, as if it’s nothing particularly noteworthy.
(But of course. Satoru can control the very structure of atomic energy, so why should something like space or time scare him?)
The doctor goes on to talk about her blood sugar levels and iron intake and a bunch of other stuff Eri tunes out, with her head buried in Satoru’s shoulder. Satoru interrupts with probing questions every once in a while, but the topic of her quirk isn’t touched upon again.
//
Eri’s not sure why she’s remembering that doctor visit with so much clarity, years after it happened. There’s nothing noteworthy to be gleaned from the memory.
Satoru had sat her down afterwards and done his best to explain what he could about her quirk, in a manner that a six year-old might be able to understand. Eri had a very, very powerful quirk, and because it was so powerful it was very hard to control. He said there was no reason for her to worry about it until she got older, and in the meantime, she should just concentrate on enjoying school and growing at her own pace.
And she tried. Really, she did.
She tries not to worry about her quirk, even when they’re all anyone talks about at school, nosey wide-eyed children looking at both her parents and then at her and excitedly wondering what her quirk is. She probably doesn’t help things in that regard, always defaulting to her standard lie whenever she gets anxious about all the probing questions directed at her. Satoru has never minded, though. He’s perfectly happy to claim her as the child he birthed from his own body— and can and will parrot that answer to crowds of reporters whenever he feels like causing chaos.
She hopes he doesn’t mind now, because she thinks she’s about to have to use it again.
There are people she’s never really seen before, crowding around her, asking questions in rapid order that wash through her ears like white noise. The air smells different here, somehow. Weirder. Like it’s telling her she’s somewhere else, even though the sky is blue and the sun is shining and the people barraging her with questions are speaking Japanese.
“Whoa! She dropped out of nowhere! How did she even get here? Was that a cursed technique?!”
“You idiot, did you miss the giant portal that opened up and dropped her here? She didn’t just come out of nowhere!”
“Uh, I don’t know if I would consider it giant.”
“Salmon, salmon.”
A much calmer voice cuts through all the noise. “Why don’t we just ask her?”
A giant panda-man on two legs, bigger even than Gang Orca, crouches down in front of her. He has a pleasant smile on his face as he settles closer to her height. “She looks pretty normal to me. I don’t sense any cursed energy coming from her, either… although there is a lot of cursed energy around her.”
“You think someone sent her here, then?” Asks a girl with glasses and a critical expression. “Portals don’t just happen like that.”
The friendly panda ignores this. “Hi there! My name is Panda. What’s your name?”
Eri backs away slowly, fear mounting in her stomach as she wraps trembling arms around herself. These people don’t seem evil or cruel, but people asking her questions about herself always makes her wary. Even to this day she doesn’t like to speak about herself— and luckily, what with her parents being so famous, she rarely needs to. Most people she encounters already know quite a bit about her without having to ask probing questions. It’s very odd that none of these teenagers (and talking panda) seem to know her on sight.
“Maybe you’re scaring her, Panda.” Remarks another girl, this time with short, cropped brown hair.
“Nonsense!” Panda enthuses. “Children love me! Just look at how fluffy I am! Do you want to touch my paw?”
He holds out his paw.
Eri takes another step back.
The brunette snickers. “Oh yeah, you’re a real hit with the kiddos, huh?”
The giant bear tosses a scowly growl behind his shoulder. “So you think you can do better, Nobara-chan?”
‘Nobara’ reels back with a vague look of disgust. “Hell no. Children are weird.”
Well, Eri can appreciate the honesty. She approves of it far more than the usual facetious friendliness that gets tossed her way. Everyone is always trying to be nice to her, usually in a bid to curry favor with either Hawks or Satoru. She’s learned to be distrustful of strangers with immediate affability.
A boy with pink hair elbows his way past the brunette, coming to a halt beside Panda. He gives a jaunty wave, smiling widely. There are strange marks on his cheeks, that look oddly familiar to Eri, even though she’s never seen him before.
“Hiya! I’m Itadori Yuuji. Sorry about my classmates, they can be a handful sometimes. Do you think you can tell us how you got here? Where are your parents?”
Something about the name twinges in her memory.
Her eyes widen. “... Yuuji…”
She knows that name. That’s one of the main character in Cursed Fight, the hit anime written and produced by Satoru. It’s pretty violent, apparently, so Eri’s not allowed to watch it. It’s inescapable though, what with its exponential popularity. Kids at school are constantly gushing about new episodes, and it seems like every store in Japan is having some kind of collaboration with the brand. Eri can’t even walk through a supermarket without seeing the characters emblazoned on various snack packaging.
She looks up at all the crowd around her, truly taking them in for the first time. They all look vaguely familiar, and they all seem to be wearing the same uniform (with the exception of Panda) as if they’re all students at school. Even the area around them has the vague feel of academia— a track field turned training pitch of some kind.
The pink-haired boy nods, eagerly. “Yes! That’s me! What about you? Can you tell me your name?”
Eri just stares at him with dawning horror. Itadori Yuuji is a character in Satoru’s show. He’s not real. So why is he in front of Eri, asking for her name? How did Eri even get here?
She honestly doesn’t even remember. She was upset and overwhelmed, and her classmates had been so pushy about the new season of Satoru’s anime, prodding her for more information even when she swore she didn’t know— (“Hey, hey, is it true Hoshino dies? I heard he gets stabbed!” “Really? No way! He’s so strong!” “Yeah, and how is he in the other seasons if he dies in this one? It’s supposed to be a prequel! Eri-chan, tell us!”) — and she hadn’t been feeling well all day, and suddenly it had all become too much for her and she’d buried her head in her hands to try to block it all out but she can’t remember what happened next—
“Oof, good going Itadori, I think you just made it worse.” Nobara laughs, meanly.
Yuuji looks panicked. “I swear I didn’t mean to! Are you okay, kid?!”
Eri looks down and sees she’s gripping her sweater with a fervor that threatens to tear the thread from the fabric. Her heart is beating rabbit-fast in her chest. She’s never really used her quirk before— and the last time she’d accidentally used it, her father had ended up erased from existence. What had she done? Did she erase all her classmates? Did she erase herself?
“It could possibly tear apart the fabric of dimensions.”
Has Eri destroyed the world?
“Oh shit, she’s crying, what do I do, I didn’t mean to do that!!”
“No shit, Itadori!” The brunette barks. “Get away from her! Can’t you see you’re scaring her?”
“I think we’re all scaring her.” Remarks the talking panda.
“Okay, this is stupid.” A new voice cuts in, with a heavy sigh. “We obviously don’t know what’s going on here, and we’re not making it any better by asking. I’m going to call Gojo-sensei.”
“We’re already overwhelming her, and you think calling Satoru is going to make it any better?” The girl with glasses retorts, incredulous.
“Maki-chan is right, Fushiguro-kun,” the Panda pipes in. “Satoru is a man of many talents, but consoling small children is not one of them.”
“And you don’t think I already know that?” Fushiguro counters, deadpan. “But that guy knows more about Jujutsu than any of us. If anyone will know what to do, it’s him.”
Eri looks up sharply, tears still blurring her vision.
“S— Satoru?” She echoes, weakly, hope crackling to life in her chest.
All the teenagers stop arguing amongst themselves to turn to stare at her. “Yeah. Gojo Satoru.” Says Fushiguro, phone in his hand. “Do you know him?”
Gojo Satoru. Of course she knows him.
Eri nods eagerly. “Yes! He birthed me from his own body!”
The phone slips out of the boy’s hand. He looks like Eri just hit him upside the head with a frying pan. His friends aren’t all that much better. The panda is wheezing on the floor.
“He what.”
//
“I what now?” Satoru looks visibly confused, even with most of his face covered by a blindfold.
Eri wants to start crying all over again.
It’s Satoru but it’s not.
Glasses girl— Maki, someone called her— pinches her nose with a bereaved expression. “Satoru, seriously, if this is your idea of a joke—”
“I don’t even know what’s going on here!” Satoru protests, holding up his hands. He sounds as if he’s telling the truth, which is bad news for Eri.
Eri has always labored under the impression that Satoru knows everything, and can fix everything. He regularly pulls off feats everyone else in the world considers impossible, and then laughs about it, so Eri has never been disabused of the notion. But this Satoru isn’t her Satoru. He clearly doesn’t even know her. He’s not the same person who tucks Eri into bed every night, who has begrudgingly come to adore Meow even though he pathologically despises all the hair Meow leaves on his person, who tells her it’s okay to call him dad if she wants to, but it’s also okay if she doesn’t want to. (He did, however, insist she call Hawks ‘Mom’ at least once to his face, just to hear him squawk.) Satoru is the best person in the world, he’s her favorite person, he really is her dad even though Eri’s too scared to say it to his face (she’s terrified of jinxing it, of cursing him with her existence in the same way she’d ruined her first father) and he always knows exactly how to make her feel better no matter how upset she is— but this Satoru hasn’t even taken off his blindfold, or even given her a hug.
This isn’t Satoru at all.
This is just a stranger with his face.
The thought that she really is alone here in this strange world makes her cry all over again.
“I told you getting Satoru involved was a stupid idea!” Maki denounces, shoving Satoru away. With his Infinity barrier, it’s not all that successful. “Look, he made her cry even worse than Itadori.”
“I didn’t mean to!” Wails Yuuji, with a dejected expression.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around the situation,” says Satoru, arms crossed, rubbing at his chin. “So you said she came out of a portal that didn’t feel like cursed energy— which shouldn’t be possible— right in the middle of campus— that has a barrier against cursed energy— and the only thing she’s said so far is that I birthed her from my own body?”
All the students nod emphatically.
Satoru laughs. “Well then! This all sounds very impossible. I like it!”
“Are you not going to comment on the fact you were the only person she knew by name, and not only that, but she’s saying you gave birth to her?” The tall boy with the wiry-dark hair asks, in a flat tone that suggests he really doesn’t want to know the answer.
“Yeah, sensei, is there something you want to tell us?” Nobara deadpans.
“Well, I certainly don’t remember ever doing something like that— and that does seem like something I would probably remember!” Satoru enthuses.
Nobara stares at him in disbelief. “So you can have babies?”
“Not that I’m aware of, no! But doesn’t that sound exciting?”
He might not be the Satoru Eri remembers, but he certainly has his terrible sense of humor.
“No, Satoru, it sounds an awful lot like something you really ought to know about yourself.” Maki denies, brow twitching.
“I think what Satoru is implying here is that many things are made possible with cursed energy, and even he can’t predict what will happen in the future.” Panda interrupts, with a calming hand on Maki’s shoulder. “Just look at me, right? I’m a talking panda made from cursed energy! Who’s to say Satoru can’t make a little girl out of cursed energy?”
Eri rubs at her eyes, only half-paying attention to the conversation over her head. She does, however, notice that the subject of quirks has yet to be brought up. They keep mentioning cursed energy, which isn’t a term Eri hears very often. Actually, aside from classmates chatting about Cursed Fight, the only time she’s ever heard it was in a hushed conversation between her parents that she’d accidentally eavesdropped on. Does that mean she’s really in Satoru’s anime? Does that mean it’s actually a real place? She thought anime were all supposed to be made up!
“She doesn’t seem to have any cursed energy, but there’s definitely something abnormal to her,” Satoru remarks, thoughtfully. “And while she doesn’t have any cursed energy herself, she’s certainly saturated in my own!”
The students look at him in disbelief.
“So… she is yours?” Yuuji replies, confused.
“Not yet! … Probably!” Satoru chirps, brightly.
If anything, his students only look more confused. Aside from the big panda, who makes a noise of intrigue.
“Oh. I see.” Panda nods sagely.
“Eh?” Nobara squints at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Tuna,” intones the white-haired kid, from beside Panda. Eri startles at his voice, forgetting he was even there. He hasn’t talked much, and all he’s said so far were types of fish. She would have thought it was some kind of quirk, but no one seems to have any here.
“Time travel? Seriously?” Maki retorts, nonplussed.
Satoru claps his hands. “Well, there’s only one way to find out!”
//
Eri doesn’t like doctors.
They find that out the hard way.
She turns tail and books it down the hallway the moment Shouko shows up in a lab coat. One moment she’s hesitantly shuffling between Panda and Yuuji and avoiding everyone’s gazes, and in the next she’s sprinting full speed in the opposite direction. She hasn’t said a word in his presence, so Gojo’s not really sure what to make of it. Actually— she’d taken one look at him and burst into tears, which Gojo is also unsure what to make of. He doesn’t think he’s that traumatizing, but he’s been told rather reliably that he kind of is. Apparently he’s no less traumatizing as a parent as he is a teacher?
Except that doesn’t really seem to be the case.
The kids split up to try to track her down, but even with their numbers and Yuuji’s inherent athleticism, it’s still Gojo who ends up finding her first. He hadn’t been lying about her cursed energy, or rather, his cursed energy. She’s absolutely drowning in it. Gojo’s not really sure what to make of it, or how precisely she ended up with so much of his latent cursed energy all around her. She had to have been exposed to it almost constantly, and if she’s to be believed, she has been since even before her birth. (Another thing Gojo’s still not sure how to feel about.)
At any rate he uses his own signature to find her, and teleports right in front of her and grabs her by the waist before she can struggle away like she did with Maki. She’s a pretty slippery little thing. But the moment he gets his arms around her she goes limp and doesn’t fight him at all. In fact, she curls up in his arms and hides her face in his neck.
There’s no way it’s not an ingrained response— some kind of instinctual muscle memory calming her down the moment she’s in his arms.
She even agrees to see Shouko, so long as he’s holding her while the woman draws her blood. She clings to him like a little koala and doesn’t remove her face from the junction of his shoulder. She doesn’t say a word, either, shaking visibly in his arms. He really has no idea how to feel about it. So maybe she does like him? At the very least, she seems to derive comfort from his presence, which bodes well for his… future parenting endeavors.
He kicks the kids out of Shouko’s office, figuring their nosey presence is only going to set the little girl more on edge. That, and he’s not all that keen on having all his future (?) dirty laundry aired for the whole peanut gallery. He’s not sure if it's the prevailing quiet that stops the worst of her trembling, or if she’s just tired herself out from all the earlier crying, but she does seem to be less anxious the moment they’re all gone.
The sudden quiet is nice, but also rather terribly awkward for him.
She still hasn’t said a single word to him. Everything he’s heard about her has come from his students. They don’t even know her name. And yet she’s in his lap, hiding herself from the world in his arms, like she fully expects him to protect her. Surely it’s not unreasonable to be a bit discomfited by the whole affair? Gojo never interacts with kids. The last time he’d been this close to a little kid, he’d been badgering Megumi for guardianship. And even then, it’s not as if Megumi ever cried and crawled into his lap before— Megumi would probably sock him in the face before he ever went to him for comfort.
Gojo is very inexperienced in this arena, and it shows.
He’s sure he’s not fooling anyone, and definitely not this little girl. No wonder she took one look at him and burst into tears.
The silence suddenly feels oppressive. He can’t just ignore the elephant in the room any longer.
“So, kid, it’s pretty clear you know my name already. But it’s not very fair that you haven’t told me yours, y’know?” He tries, after a bit of deliberation.
The girl stirs in his arms, but otherwise doesn’t answer. He glances down at her, pulling off his blindfold. She’s got a strange little horn on the side of her head— one that resonates with an incredible, but entirely foreign, kind of power. Her whole genetic makeup looks strange to his Six Eyes. He’d noticed right away that she has an energy within her that doesn’t register to him as cursed energy, but is also one he’s never seen in any other kind of creature. Yet to his cursed sight and his normal vision, she appears to be a regular human. Well, aside from that horn.
For a long moment, he thinks she’s not going to answer him. Then she sniffles and says, quietly; “Eri.”
Her little hands flex against his jacket, like she’s worried he’ll try to pry her off. She’s still trembling ever so slightly— a hard fact to ignore when she’s pressed up against him like this. She cries a lot and shies away from touch. She rarely speaks even when asked questions directly. She ran away from Shouko like her life depended on it and refused to stop running until Gojo himself had to catch her. She’s scared. No, she’s terrified. Gojo feels a bit slow on the uptake for only realizing this now. Of course she’d be terrified. If she really did time travel, then she’s stuck in a place with unfamiliar people and the only person she does recognize is a person who doesn't recognize her at all.
“Eri-chan, I know you’re scared, but you don’t have to be, okay?” He says, slowly. “You’re safe with me now.”
Shockingly, this seems to work. Her hands uncurl from their death grip on his jacket, and she slowly peels away from his shoulder to stare up at him with big, scarlet eyes. The color is very intriguing to him. Did she get them from her mother? Or wait, isn’t he supposedly the mother in this situation? So… her other father? Who might not even be human, considering her horn and strange energy and outstanding lack of cursed energy?
Look, Gojo’s just trying to roll with the punches here, and usually he’s pretty damn good at it, but even he is reeling from all these complications.
Eri is staring at him like she’s somehow only just seeing him. Her eyes well up with tears, again, sending him into a panic.
“Wait, wait, please don’t cry! I didn’t mean to make you cry!”
If anything, this just makes it worse. Big, fat tears roll down her cheeks as she sobs against him.
Gojo has no idea what on earth to do with her. His hands are just kind of hovering around her helplessly, his entire body rigid like he’s got a ticking pipe bomb in his lap and not a small child. In his defense, she certainly seems like a pipe bomb— and he has no idea what keeps setting her off.
Shouko takes the inopportune moment to walk back into the office.
“This isn’t my fault.” Gojo says, quickly.
Shouko blinks at the sobbing girl in his lap, who has once again hidden her face in his shoulder at the doctor’s appearance. “Sure.” She says, easily. She closes the door. “Anyway, congratulations— you are not a father.”
“Yeah I—” He blinks rapidly. “Wait. What?”
“Or a mother either, for the record.” Shouko shakes her head with a vague look of consternation. “I’m still not sure how that was even supposed to work.”
Gojo stares at her blankly. “... So… She’s not my daughter?”
“Well, I never said that.” Shouko counters, drily. She plops onto the edge of her desk, observing him and Eri with a clinical expression. “She’s clearly pretty attached to you. And then there’s your cursed energy, that lingers all over her. You usually don’t see that in anything other than parents and children, or spouses— but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.”
Gojo nods absently. Yes, things like that are glaringly apparent to his Six Eyes— relationships are never hidden from him, even when he’d rather not have known about them.
Shouko clicks her pen, continuing; “Beyond that, she seems like a perfectly healthy child. A little bit anemic. Oh, and her blood sugar is a bit high, so don’t go plying her with sugar right away. Get a healthy dinner in her, and she should be fine, physically.”
Gojo blinks some more. “What?”
Shouko sends him an exasperated look, as if he’s being slow on purpose. “If your theory on time travel is true— and there’s no evidence it wouldn’t be— then I think we’ve both concluded she’s your kid, or close enough. You’ll have to feed her eventually, unless you’ve already figured out a way to get her back.”
“I…”
The thought that this might be anything more than a temporary situation hadn’t even crossed his mind.
“Wait. What— what am I supposed to do with her?” Gojo asks, voice high with rising hysteria.
He barely knew how to handle Megumi. In point of fact, he did not handle Megumi. Megumi handled himself. So did Tsumiki. What is he supposed to do with a small child?
“I’d recommend feeding her first. And there’s no telling what time travel can do to a human body, but I imagine rest wouldn’t be ill-advised.” Shouko replies, not unkindly. She looks rather sympathetic— but also like she wouldn’t trade places with him even on penalty of death.
She reaches over to pat his shoulder with a vague note of commiseration. “Don’t worry about it. People have kids all the time. It can’t be that hard, right?”
Gojo chuckles weakly. “Sure. Right. How hard can it be?”
//
He finds out Eri is all of eight years old, and she has very exacting standards for the Satoru-shaped parental figure in her life.
She expects to have access to his person at all times, and gets visibly upset when she encounters his barrier instead. Infinity is habit at this point, basically autonomous, so it takes concentrated effort on his part to keep it down for her. He can never guess when she reaches out to him to be picked up, so the whole process is quite tiring, but he can’t quite bring himself to just keep it down entirely.
She also expects him to adequately feed, clothe, and house her— which seems perfectly reasonable for a child to expect from their parent, except Gojo has never been anyone’s parent before, so he’s failing catastrophically. He sends Nobara out on a frantic side quest to procure as much clothing in her size as she can, and then promptly sends Yuuji after her when he realizes he’d just given her carte blanche to use his credit card in Tokyo; there’s no way the girl is going to manage to bring back the mountain of bags she’ll end up with on her own. Then he sends Megumi and Maki to the nearest konbini to acquire whatever toiletries a girl her age is going to need.
She doesn’t like having Gojo out of her sight. On a related note, she almost always has a hand on him in some capacity. If he’s not carrying her in his arms, she’s clinging to his hand, or grasping the side of his jacket.
She grows panicked if he’s not in her immediate line of sight, which makes bath time into a curious affair. Luckily she accepted to just have him on the other side of the shower curtain, but she did have very strange ideas about him singing to her. Gojo doesn’t particularly mind this, although it is a rather bewildering concept. He’s got a great singing voice, if he does say so himself, but he’s not entirely sure why anyone would know that when he doesn’t make it a habit to sing.
She expects him to cut her food for her (she’s not allowed to handle knives on her own yet, apparently), help her dry and comb her hair before bed (with princess braids, whatever the hell that means, he does his best but he’s fairly certain all he did was make a mess), either read her a story or sing her a lullaby before bed (with zero children's books on hand, he just chooses the first song off the top of his head, which had not been even remotely kid appropriate in hindsight), and cuddle her back to sleep when she wakes up in the middle of the night. That last one really sends him reeling. She just shuffles into his room, where he’s lying wide awake in a mild existential panic, collapses on top of him and stubbornly clings to him until he wraps bewildered arms around her.
And then she falls asleep there.
And stays asleep there.
The sun is rising and Gojo hasn’t slept a wink and there’s a kid drooling on his chest he doesn’t know what to do with.
Eri seems to be a little more social— or perhaps just a little less shell-shocked— come morning, and actually manages to properly answer some of his questions during breakfast.
Even if some of those answers were not exactly ones he was ready to hear.
It all starts when she mentions his sister , and he almost hacks up a lung dry-heaving through a poorly timed sip of coffee.
“Sister?” He croaks out, wiping his mouth.
Eri doesn’t seem to register anything amiss. She scoops a generous helping of strawberries onto her syrupy waffle— he’s pretty sure Shouko specifically advised him not to give her sugar, but what else was he supposed to do for breakfast?— and nods. “Mm. Aunt Fuyumi.”
Okay. So he has a sister. That’s news to him.
And apparently a whole gaggle of siblings on top of that. “Who’s the eldest?” He asks, more out of bemusement than anything. He’s pretty sure he’d know if he had a sister. Or any other siblings besides.
“You. Then Aunt Fuyumi, then Uncle Natsuo, and then Uncle Shouto,” Eri reveals, promptly.
Gojo is very, very glad he hadn’t taken another sip of coffee. It would have just come back up as violently as his last one.
“Eri-chan,” he says, slowly. “What exactly do you know about me? Like, can you tell me the name of my parents? My last name?”
Eri blinks at him owlishly. “I dunno grandpa’s real name.” Okay, so apparently his father is also alive, when Gojo is fairly certain he’s supposed to be about ten years dead already. “Your last name is Todoroki. But you sometimes go by Gojo still.”
Still? Gojo slowly leans back in his chair.
He blinks rapidly.
A probable answer to this confusing puzzle comes to mind. After all, there’s a perfectly socially acceptable— perhaps even expected— reason for an adult to change their name.
“Err— Eri-chan… Do you, uh, have another parent?” He fumbles, awkwardly.
Eri’s response is immediate. “Yep.”
Gojo… does not know how to feel about that. He’d sort of tabled the possibility after he’d learned Eri was adopted. Apparently she used that ‘birthed from his own body’ excuse whenever she got scared of invasive questions, a tactic he quietly approved of, even though it had scared the absolute shit out of him. But, well, if he had a kid, even an adopted one, surely it was possible he had a significant other as well?
“Okay. That’s… nice.” He has no idea what else to say to that.
So, he apparently gets married at some point.
He changes his name, ends up with a crowd of in-laws, and co-parents an adorable little daughter. He did not expect to ever be emotionally-equipped to handle any of that, but apparently the future is a strange and perplexing place.
Todoroki, huh? He doesn’t hate it.