Work Text:
Challenger #1:
Gojo Kazuki
Age: 13
Height: 165 cm
Special Abilities: can speak French
The Challenge: sharing a bedroom
**
“Can you please just tell her to clean up?”
Theoretically, the answer is ‘yes.’ It wouldn’t exactly be difficult. But can and should are two different matters, especially without the effortless maternal authority that usually keeps the Gojo children in check.
It’s really no problem, taking care of the kids alone for a couple of days, and it’s not the first time. Utahime usually gets a handful of out-of-town missions every year and there should be no reason that her absence changes anything or interrupts the harmonious function of their household. But she’s also the parent that her children are far more inclined to take seriously, and if their two oldest daughters are going to come to blows over the cleanliness of their shared bedroom, it’s not going to happen when she isn’t around to set them straight.
(Gojo had never initially considered that his refusal to be serious on ninety percent of occasions would undermine his parental authority. If the fact that Kazuki would never ask that question of her mother is any indication, it sort of has.)
He chooses to deflect.
“Have you talked to Kimie about this?”
“Yes,” Kazuki scoffs. “She says that if she cleans up, her room will look wrong.”
“Well, maybe it would.” He shrugs. “Can’t you just leave her half alone?”
“You don’t get it!” Kazuki protests. “It’s…it’s unsightly!”
“Unsightly, huh?” he laughs. “You’re kinda weird, Kazukin.”
She crosses her arms. “I’m right, tou-chan.”
“Is there any reason besides…aesthetics” - if she’s going to use words no thirteen-year-old should know, so is he - “that you want her to clean up?”
“I can’t focus in there.”
“Study in another room,” he proposes.
“Or she can clean her side.” Kazuki frowns. “It’s in the treaty.”
“The what?”
“I drew up a treaty last year,” she tells him proudly. “To decide how we can and can’t use the room.”
“You drew up a treaty,” he mutters. “Yeah, that tracks.”
She’d have been twelve. Typical Kazuki.
“The treaty states that I have to be able to use the room to study.”
He shakes his head. “You’re scary, Kazukin.”
“I’m smart. Kimie is out of control.”
“So you’re trying to get me to control her, is what I’m hearing?”
Kazuki brightens. “Exactly!”
“I’m not gonna do that, Kazukin.”
“But-”
“It’s both of your rooms. If she doesn’t want to keep it neat” - and Gojo, who’s always been the neater partner, has extensive experience in sharing a bedroom with someone who never cleans up after herself - “that’s her problem.”
“But I have to live in it!”
“Yeah, I know.” He pats her head. “It’s called ‘lowering your expectations.’”
“It would be good for her,” Kazuki says, trying to argue a different angle now. “Cleaning builds discipline.”
“Can you quit talking like the dictionary? You’re freakin’ me out.”
“It might make her study more,” Kazuki argues.
“No, it wouldn’t.”
Kazuki’s shoulders slump. She knows it, too. “I just really hate it.”
In truth, Kimie’s side of their bedroom isn’t that messy. She’s forced to clean it often enough that it’s not a total wreck, but it’s nowhere near meeting Kazuki’s immaculately-neat standards. It’s not as if there’s a real problem with the cleanliness - mold won’t grow beneath piles of junk left lying around. But Kazuki has always had a tough time understanding that things don’t have to be done her way to be acceptable.
“I know,” he says gently, “but this isn’t going to be the last time you have to live with somebody who doesn’t want to do things your way.”
“But-”
“It might be good,” he prompts her. “Learning how to be okay with that.”
He’s pretty proud of himself for that one. He’s not and will never be Utahime, but he thinks she would approve.
“Fine,” she sighs. “I guess.”
**
Challenge Result: success.
**
Challenger #2:
Gojo Kimie
Age: 10
Height: 155 cm
Special Abilities: optimism
The Challenge: sixth-grade biology
**
“The ribosomes, Kimi-chan.”
She blinks up at him impassively. “They’re in cells.”
So she’s going to be difficult about this. Challenge accepted. “Where?”
“...inside of them,” Kimie replies, blank-faced.
“Kimicchi, where?”
“On the inside.”
“You said that, Kimie.”
“The interior.”
“Using a fancier word isn’t going to magically make the answer right.”
“I dunno, then,” she concedes.
“The endoplasmic reticulum, Kimicchi.”
“That sounds like a food,” she says.
“Well, it’s not.” Gojo might not know what it actually is, but he knows it’s not that. He chooses to flip to the next card before Kimie can get wind of his lack of in-depth knowledge of sixth-grade biology. “What’s a golgi apparatus?”
“The weird squiggly thing,” Kimie answers confidently.
“Uh…”
“Look it up,” she tells him. “You’ll see.”
He does. According to the first picture that pops up when he searches for it, she isn’t wrong. “Somehow I doubt that the test is going to ask you what it looks like.”
“Will too,” Kimie argues. “There’s a matching section. You hafta label a picture.”
“Oh, wow. I stand corrected.”
“So as long as I know it’s the squiggly one, I’m fine,” she says. “And ribosomes are little dots.”
“But what do they do?” he challenges.
“Mmmm…dunno.”
He reads the back of the index card. “Make proteins.”
Gojo doesn’t really know how elementary school science tests work. That she’d need to learn what all of these things actually do seems like a given, though.
“Makes proteins,” she repeats. “Oh! And the squiggly thing is the post office!”
“Huh?”
“That’s what Kinohara-sensei calls it,” she tells him. “It’s the post office because it packages the proteins so they get mailed out right.”
“Huh.” He checks the back of the golgi apparatus card and raises his eyebrows - she’s right. “Yup. That’s basically what it does.”
“See?” she says proudly. “I know some stuff!”
He doesn’t miss a beat, pulling another index card from the stack. “But do you know where the DNA goes?”
“In the middle.”
“Which is called…?”
“The middle?”
“Nope.”
“The center?”
“Kimi-chan, we talked about this.”
“The interior.”
“Still wrong.”
“The core.”
“You know, you’d probably remember this if you studied as hard for biology as you do for your vocabulary quizzes.”
“Oh, I don’t study for those either,” she replies, not even a little bit offended. “Kazukin just uses big words.”
Of course she does. The last time he’d walked into her room, he’d found her with her nose buried in The Tale of Genji. He’s never met a thirteen-year-old who’d willingly read a book over a thousand pages long, so it sort of comes with the territory.
“Well,” he sighs, “glad to see you’re keeping up with your schoolwork.”
“I’m not,” she tells him without an ounce of remorse.
“I know that, Kimi-chan.”
“But I do know that the cell wall keeps the inside of the cell on the inside.” She pauses. “But only for plants.”
“Well, as long as you know it’s only for plants.” He shakes his head fondly. “Have you even looked at these cards since you made them?”
“Nope.”
Great. “I had a feeling.”
“I only made them because Kazuki said I had to.”
“Why, exactly?”
“She said I was being irresponsible and if I didn’t study, she’d start cleaning up my side of the room.”
“Wait, what?”
“‘Cause we have an agreement,” Kimie tells him. “I get to leave my half of our room messy, and she gets to threaten to clean it up if I do something she doesn’t like.”
That’s…an interesting power struggle they’ve got going on there. Preteen politics are a truly baffling thing.
“And you were so afraid of a clean room that you made flashcards?”
Kimie nods eagerly. “I like my mess.”
“Interesting,” he mutters. “Well. Hate to break it to ya, but they’re not going to help you if you don’t look at them.”
“I know.”
“Do you care?”
“Nah.”
“I…see.” He pulls a new card from the stack. “DNA is in the nucleus, by the way.”
“Oh yeah,” she agrees. “That.”
It’s not exactly a promising start.
**
Challenge Result: doomed from the beginning.
**
Challenger #3:
Gojo Reika
Age: 9
Height: 150 cm
Special Abilities: can hit the really high notes at karaoke
The Challenge: spiders
**
Gojo Reika is a mystery.
She resembles neither of her parents in temperament. No one they’ve consulted has ever seen anything like the mysterious symptoms she suffers as a result of her cursed technique. She’s mousy and shy, just about the least-likely two things a scion of the Gojo Clan could possibly be. She’s shy and weak until her little brother is insulted, in the event of which she’d probably rip out a kid’s larynx with her bare hands without blinking.
She’s a weird little dude.
But there’s one trait she unquestionably inherited from her father, and - no, it’s not the Six Eyes - that would be the depth and intensity of her loathing for spiders.
None of the other children seem too bothered when a bug makes an uninvited appearance. Kazuki squashes bugs on sight, no questions asked. Kimie captures them in jars or tissues and puts them safely outside. Kazuhiro, unbothered, pretends they aren’t there. They all get that from their mother, who was always the bug-squasher in their relationship. But their father?
Very little strikes fear into Gojo Satoru’s heart. The thought of losing his wife to a curse or his child to an assassin, for one. Kazuki having a boyfriend. Students being sent on misgraded missions. The French language. A worldwide sugar shortage. The cancellation of Seven Day Bride: Japan Edition. Losing his cursed technique.
And spiders.
Reika is perhaps the most sensible of her siblings, because she, at very least, has the common sense to scream when she encounters one. As a warning, Gojo likes to think, so he knows what rooms to avoid. Or maybe just to attract Kazuki and her bug-smushing services. Gojo really does appreciate that. Except that it makes him feel a little guilty and a little like a failure of a father that his knee-jerk reaction to her warnings is to heed them.
Maybe a better father would actually be of help in such dire circumstances. If he were more valiant, he’d charge in with one of Utahime’s heavy work boots and smash the spider to bits before it could get within a ten-foot radius of his precious daughter. But he’s not. Frankly, he’d rather avoid the situation entirely.
Which is why things become rather awkward when the spider-spotting is a joint effort.
He’d already been in the kitchen when Reika wandered in to forage, but it’s she who spots the spider first. When she reaches for the handle of the cabinet where Gojo keeps his off-limits candy stash (in front of him - how rude), it’s there, scaling the face of the cabinet door on its spindly legs - she does not open it. Naturally. At least one of his children, Gojo thinks, has appropriate self-preservation instincts.
But now he’s seen it, too, and that’s not very good at all, because Reika turns to him and he just knows he can’t run this time.
“Tou-chan,” she says, pointing at the cabinet, “spider.”
“I see that.”
“Tou-chan.”
“What?”
She backs away from the cabinet. “Can you get it?”
“Can’t we wait for it to go away?”
Reika crosses her arms. “Should I go get Kazukin?”
Damned kids. Reika apparently knows that the easiest way to get Gojo to do anything is to play on his pride, make him the chicken if he doesn’t. And it’s not like he hasn’t had to defend his children from worse than a stray spider that wound up lost in the kitchen.
“One sec,” he mutters, digging through the cabinet where they keep the kitchen tools they own just in case but rarely use until he finds the meat tenderizer. There are probably easier and neater ways to do this. He could probably zap the thing with cursed energy and call it a day. But this seems far more reasonable somehow.
He swings. The flat end of the mallet, when he pulls it away, is covered in crushed bug.
“That was violent,” Reika comments.
“Seriously?” he side-eyes her. “Seriously, Reika?”
She shrugs as he washes the spider corpse off of the mallet. “It was.”
“You’re going to beg me to kill a spider for you and then complain about my methods?”
Kazuki peeks around the corner. “Tou-chan? Is everything okay?”
He looks up from his washing. “Fine, Kazukin.”
She narrows her eyes. “I heard something crash.”
“Tou-chan hit a spider with the meat hammer thingy,” Reika informs her, pointing to the candy cabinet. “There’s a dent now.”
He looks over his shoulder to see what she’s talking about and sighs. There’s a depression like a cracked-in eggshell where his mallet had been.
“Oh,” he says faintly. “There is.”
Kazuki crosses her arms. “Kaa-chan is going to kill you.”
“I was protecting her children from the-”
“Spider you saw in the kitchen?”
“She asked me to!”
Kazuki looks entirely too disgusted for words.
“Next time,” she says, “use your hand.”
**
Challenge Result: semi-successful
**
Challenger #4:
Gojo Kazuhiro
Age: 5
Height: 105 cm
Special Abilities: can play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on the violin
The Challenge: sleep
**
After four kids and nearly forty years of attempts on his life, it takes very little to wake Gojo up. Little footsteps, hot breath beside the bed tickling his cheek - he’s awake in only a few seconds. And he knows when he doesn’t see a pair of bright blue eyes peering at him in the darkness who’s come to see him.
Only one of his children has eyes that don’t glow in the dark.
“Hiro?” he says sleepily, rubbing his eyes. “Whas’it?”
“Tou-chan,” he says softly, “I can’t sleep.”
Gojo’s eyes focus. His eyes are wide, and he’s hugging a yellow fleece blanket to his chest like he’s scared of something. “Bad dream?” he asks. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Yeah,” Kazuhiro replies.
“Oh.” He lifts the comforter on the side nearest to the edge of the bed. “Did you wanna sleep here?”
He nods. Gojo reaches down his hand to help him up, but Kazuhiro shakes his head fervently - no help. Okay, then.
It takes work to climb into a bed nearly as tall as he is, but he makes it after a couple of tries, then crawls up towards his father and lays his head on the pillow beside him. He’s facing Gojo, his eyes still wide-open, but he doesn’t say anything - there’s probably, Gojo figures, something he can’t figure out how to ask.
There are a lot of times like that with Hiro. He’s not the best at putting his questions into words, and when he can’t, Gojo has to try to puzzle them out. It’s a process of trial and error he knows well by now.
“What happened in the dream?” he asks, figuring it’s possible he wants to talk about it. Sometimes he needs to be told that they’re not real. But he shakes his head, so it obviously wasn’t that.
“Do you not want to go back to sleep?” he tries, but Hiro shakes his head again.
He’s running out of questions. It’s with vain hope that he looks to the empty left side of the bed and asks, “do you want kaa-chan?”
“I miss Mama,” Hiro says, his voice small.
He almost wishes he hadn’t asked. Utahime’s away, and there’s nothing Gojo can do about that. He can’t be what his son is asking for this time around, and it stings. But it’s not unexpected.
Usually, when Kazuhiro has nightmares, he’ll go to Reika, who’s in the next bed over, or else come to his parent’s room and crawl into Utahime’s side of the bed - but he never asks for Gojo. He’s never sought his comfort like he does his mother’s and sister’s. But if he hadn’t gone to Reika tonight, he must’ve thought that his father was his best option.
“Well, you’ve got me this time,” he says, smoothing down Hiro’s hair. It’s one of the few affectionate gestures he’ll accept from Gojo without stiffening up or flinching. “Can I help?”
Kazuhiro shakes his head. He’s keeping his distance at the other edge of the pillow, but he’s close enough to reach for. That gives him an idea.
“I know something that might make you feel better,” he says.
“Hm?”
“Is it okay if I put my arms around you?”
Kazuhiro hates being hugged more than almost anything else in the world; better to ask that question and risk rejection than not ask and risk scaring him even more. “Why?” Hiro asks.
“Sometimes that feels nice.” He pauses. “Safer, I guess.”
Hiro considers for a moment, then nods. “Okay.”
Tentatively, Gojo puts a hand in the center of his back, and when he doesn’t stiffen, he inches closer, wrapping both arms loosely around him. Both of Kazuhiro’s hands make fists around the fabric of his shirt.
“That good?” he asks.
“Mm,” Hiro mumbles, which he takes to mean that it is.
“Good.” He pats Hiro’s back, figuring that anything more contact-heavy will overwhelm him in a state like this. As rare as moments like this are, and as much as he wants to soak this one in, he can’t afford to be so sentimental that he forgets what Hiro needs. “Nothing’s gonna getcha, okay?”
Hiro makes a noise that could mean he understands or could just be a half-asleep response to hearing him speak.
“I know you want mama,” he says, more to himself than to Hiro, who he expects is asleep. “But I can help, too.”
He really only says that for his own benefit, for a need to believe that he’s telling the truth - that his mama’s-boy son needs his father just as much. But it’s not as if there’s a safer place in the world Hiro could be right now. If it’s protection he wants, he’s in the best possible hands.
“Sleep good,” he finishes, once he knows Kazuhiro is asleep again, and kisses the crown of his head. “I’ve gotcha.”
**
Mission Result: passed with flying colors.
**
Challenger #1:
Gojo Utahime
Age: 43
Height: 170 cm
Special Abilities: general scariness
The Challenge: explaining himself
**
“So were you ever going to explain where that dent in the cabinet door came from?”
Kimie looks at Reika, who looks at Kazuhiro, who’s staring off into space. Only Kazuki wants to meet her mother’s eyes.
“It’s less of a dent and more of a depression,” she says.
“Kazukin,” Utahime sighs, “who did it?”
She looks over at her siblings. They nod in agreement.
“Tou-chan,” they say simultaneously.
“...right.”
“No, actually,” Kimie assures her, which is ironic, because she wasn’t even there. “Tou-chan made it.”
“There was a spider,” Reika explains.
Utahime shakes her head. “And what exactly did he do to said spider?”
“Hit it,” Reika tells her.
“With?”
“The meat hammer.”
Utahime’s forehead creases like it always does when she’s about to make someone’s life a little bit harder. The girls exchange looks, wondering if they’re off the hook. Hiro, though, seems unbothered.
“Satoru!”
Kazuki flinches. That tone, coming from her mother, means nothing good. But her father doesn’t seem to know it, or else, when he pokes his head through the doorway, he pretends not to.
“Yeah?” he asks.
“The meat tenderizer?” she asks, making her why haven’t I divorced you already face. “Really?”
He shrugs. “There was a spider.”
“There was a spider,” Reika solemnly agrees.
And Utahime, as ever, doesn’t even know where to start.
**
Challenge Result: spectacular failure.