Look out, in the tall grass! a writer crueler than me has appeared!
okay thankfully i have no plans to kill yuuji meaning i can explore this hypothetical freely with you. for better or worse.
first of all i am very interested in shoko in this au because, in the grand tradition of jujutsu kaisen characters, i’ve given her sibling issues. idk how much of the Ieri Family Lore i’ve made will become explicit in the fic itself (i brainstormed a bunch of shoko character stuff forever ago, probably in the vicinity of chapter 4? 5? just so i’d have some solid ground for writing her consistently & without a specific plan or intention for ‘revealing’ it), so i don’t feel it’s spoilers to say that long story short, she had an older sibling who fucked off and cut contact, which is why she has so many feelings about— igarashi you tell your younger brother you exist right the fuck now or so help me—
ahem. anyway. the point is that thanks in part to the fact she’s already interfering with the itadori family, she’d definitely feel some responsibility for baby yuuji if big yuuji died. but she is also absolutely not a nurturing person and would be real fucked up about it? maybe some anxious-avoidant smothering and a lot of fausting the kid off on satoru (because having a younger sibling too she at least factually knows what is needed even if she struggles to do it herself). like. bitch. support this kid financially. or teach him to ride a bike. or something. i don’t know, go buy him a fucking bike!
so satoru becomes the Big Brothers Big Sisters guy who swans into itadori’s life now and again to (he is googling what children like) take him to an amusement park, or, science museum? and also train him in self defence because he doesn’t know how else to be. wasuke hates satoru’s guts, or seems to. when satoru shows up the first time he’s like, “about your brother/grandson—“ but wasuke interrupts “if that ungrateful kid won’t come see us himself i don’t want to hear about him.” and in classic gojo fashion he’s like okay, fine. *functionally steals igarashi’s family for himself* *never tells them he's dead*
this is maybe the most wholesome dynamic here bc i think gojo’s actually the best at not seeing igarashi in itadori. like, aside from making a funny face the first time he shows up, the whole toji-megumi resemblance already shows us he individualizes people quickly, and i think itadori himself would shut down any talk of his dead older brother (as he does about his parents ep 1) and gojo would respect that choice to a fault (as he does with megumi’s), so itadori isn’t getting all these “ah your brother this, your brother that…” griefdumps — from him at least. (gojo might have overly high expectations of itadori’s potential, though, and that’s probably the most fraught this dynamic gets.) this is pretty much filling the gap in gojo’s narrative that i’ve left by reassigning the fushiguro kids to other adults LOL. he gets to have some family… without having to be a parentified teen bc wasuke is there to adult them both… wait why is this kinda good for him.
SUGURU THOUGH. BAD FOR OUR SUGURU. god the idea of defected!heroine!suguru? when his yuuji died? absolutely fucked up toxic to that kid. i disagree on one crucial front here and that’s the heaven part; suguru’s far too buddhist coded for that. he believes igarashi escaped samsara and he is like, if i can do one good thing for my late friend it’s to enlighten his younger brother too.
and by enlighten, he means kidnap and… educate.
like, he’d be weird about itadori being a non sorcerer, that can’t be avoided. but compared to others it’d be more like subtle cringing and a lot of disgruntled sighs, enough for itadori to pick up on but not enough for him to understand why suguru always seems so disappointed with him — particularly as suguru is careful to slyly hide away his cult’s actual central tenets from itadori’s eyes as he teaches the kid meditation and the principles of non-attachment. to itadori suguru is his overly religious brother figure that he can never please (god, he probably insists on being called Onii-sama or something), who doesn’t seem to get along with his other brother figure (even though they’re best friends?) and his weird distant sister figure (who seems to get really stressed out every time she sees yuuji.) because the two factions keep kidnapping him back and forth and sniping at each other. (satoru also refuses to tell itadori suguru’s whole ethos. he’s hoping still that things can be fixed, suguru can come back to him somehow, and itadori will never have to know. itadori though isn’t an idiot and knows something is wrong.)
importantly, suguru does fully intend to kill itadori one day. just, you know, after he’s sure the boy has escaped samsara. it’s the kind thing to do. i’m actually making myself insane about this delightfully toxic dynamic sorry not sorry
also, megumi would always wonder if yaga made panda to replace yuuji. would never say it.