".....What do you mean?" Reiji asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.
Daichi took his time to reply, smoothing out his beard as if he were contemplating how to explain before finally turning back to him.
"How much do you know about our history?"
Reiji referred to his predecessor's memories, as well as anything he knew about the syndicate from the game, but realized that in both aspects, his information was limited.
In the main plot itself, everything revolved around Riku, so the Yagami Syndicate merely served as a powerful backer for OG Reiji that occasionally lent him a hand for whatever misdeeds he wanted to do.
They never came to the forefront as the main force that needed to be defeated unless the protagonist made it a goal to take down everything that Reiji was part of, and even those routes progressed with partial depth when it came to the history of the group.
For example, the Player finds out that Reiji's stepbrother is vying for the throne and can be a helping hand to take him down, or the fact that henchmen like Beardy and Baldy would help with any retaliation on Reiji's behalf to a certain extent.
And in the memories he inherited?
There was just as little information.
His laziness, rebellious nature, and overall lack of ambition meant that he'd never integrated fully with the Syndicate aside from the random jobs assigned by his Dad and the self-defence training he'd received.
Which is also why he had been constantly surprised by how different the Syndicate seemed to be from his expectations.
"Uh.....Not much? It's not like you ever really explained it, so leaving out what you told me last week at the restaurant, I just know about some of the business we do and how big a reach we have," he muttered after collecting his thoughts.
Daichi didn't seem surprised or disappointed.
"That's to be expected. Your ignorance was by design."
".....You mean you kept it a secret on purpose? Why?"
It didn't make much sense to him.
Did their history contain some sort of taboo secret?
Or was it stained with too much blood?
But it couldn't be the latter since he already knew that they'd destroyed all the other organized crime rings in the country during their growth period.
Daichi approached him and sat back down on the sofa across the table, placing one leg over the other as he took another swig of his whiskey.
"Why don't you guess when we started the syndicate?" he asked with a small curve of his lips.
'I think he's 49 years old right now, so.....'
Reiji tilted his head and made an educated guess.
"Well..... I do know that we became prominent about 20 years ago, so adding a few years of development to that.....I think around 25 years ago?"
'That would mean he was in his early twenties at the time, which is pretty insane now that I think about it.'
But contrary to his expectations, Daichi shook his head.
"No."
"Oh, was it later?"
And then he heard a light chuckle from behind him.
Satoshi, the elderly man, was grinning with an amused twinkle in his eyes, and even the two burly men were smiling.
Just as he was wondering what was so funny, Daichi's next words made his stomach churn with disbelief.
"The Yagami Syndicate...I started it in my second year of High School."
"...The fuck?"
"Language! Don't use such vulgarity in front of me."
"No, that's not the point here!" Reiji slammed his hands on the table as he leaned forward in shock. "Is that a joke, or were you being serious?"
Forming a Yakuza syndicate, one that dominates a country and has significant global reach, in high school?
If not a joke, that would be the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard in two lives combined.
Daichi swirled the alcohol in his glass leisurely, like he was satisfied by his son's over-the-top reaction.
"Rein it in and let me explain, it'll make more sense soon," he stated.
Reiji exhaled and leaned back into his seat, but the continuous stream of questions in his mind made it difficult for him to calm down.
Daichi raised his chin to the roof, his eyes softening when he thought about the first days of the group.
"I'm sure you know about the Global War in the late 70s. Back then, after the war ended....The country was in a period of unrest. There was constant crime, a weak police force, and because of a dip in the global economy, a large number of people were unable to find a stable job after the domestic scene was severely impacted, even with proper work experience. That started a cycle, where some of the unemployed resorted to crime to survive and made it difficult for the domestic economy to recover, which again led to more people being fired. The best way to describe it would be 'dark, gloomy, and chaotic,' a time where everywhere you looked, you saw despair."
Reiji listened closely, recalling some details from his studies.
Although he wasn't sure if this had also happened in his original world, he remembered this bit of history from OG Reiji's middle school classes.
In Japan, those years were dubbed 'The Period of the Setting Sun', a play on the country's moniker 'The Land of the Rising Sun'.
This showed just how bad the situation was decades ago.
"So when I was in High School, my parents also had trouble making ends meet, and on some days we barely had enough to eat. After a while, I decided to do something about it," Daichi continued.
"...Starting an entire Yakuza Syndicate to put bread on the table is a little excessive, no?" Reiji smiled.
"Yes, but that's not what I did."
"Huh? Then?"
Daichi smirked, a rare sight for a man who always tried to appear stoic.
"I wasn't exaggerating when I said that there was a lot of crime back then. And when there's a lot of crime, there are a lot of victims as a consequence. I saw that, and when combined with the fact that I was a really good fighter, I saw a business opportunity. I used that strength to offer services to these 'victims', and for a price, I'd do various jobs for them. Beating people up, recovering money stolen from them, and even making sure that those folks wouldn't be able to commit those crimes again, even if they wanted to."
"....."
What reaction should he have for something like that?"
Shock?
Respect?
Disbelief?
Or synonyms for whatever emotion best suited this bombshell of a revelation?
"So...You were basically a mercenary?" he asked weakly.
"Mercenary....." Daichi repeated, turning to Satoshi with a gleam in his eyes. "That's what we called ourselves at the start, didn't we? Yagami Mercenary Services? Those were good times."
Satoshi sighed, closing his eyes while leaning against the wall.
"Indeed. Simple, chaotic, but yes, those were good times."
Reiji looked back and forth between them, his brows raised with curiosity.
"Gramps, you were there from the start?"
"Haha, that wouldn't be completely accurate."
Daichi interjected, adding another bombshell. "Satoshi was my Boxing Sensei back then, who taught me all my moves. He only joined a little later, but he was aware of my 'business' and even gave me advice."
"WHATT???"
This old man, whom he thought handled the administrative tasks and loose ends, was a former Sensei who taught kids?
Imagining Nishimura Sensei, his MMA coach, in that same position and Reiji commanding him like a right-hand man made him shudder uncomfortably.
Satoshi shadow-boxed a few moves, which still held a sense of technique and power despite his age.
"You should have seen me back then, I used to beat up your old man if he made any mistakes during his training!"
Reiji glanced at Daichi and held back a laugh when he saw his twitching eye.
"Back to the main point," he snapped. "Me, your mother, and her best friend, teamed up to offer these services back then, and we started getting a lot of requests once people realized that we were good at what we did."
"Wait, Mom was part of it too?"
".....Yes. To be completely honest, there wouldn't have been any organizational growth if not for her, since I was a little hot-headed at the time and had no intention of expanding. I was happy to earn just enough to keep my family out of trouble. But she saw the potential of the business and joined in, and that's when we started growing our reach."
Reiji frowned, still unsure about one thing.
"I know you said the police force was weak back then, but breaking the law so blatantly without any backing should've gotten you into trouble, right?"
Daichi stayed silent.
"...Criminal charges were a problem, obviously. But we did have backing."
"Hm? Who?"
"Your maternal Grandfather. He was the Chief of Police and had a lot of power, which helped us avoid law enforcement at times and get out with a warning whenever they did intervene."
Reiji's brain finally crashed.
If the information till now was slowly overloading his brain cells, this was the virus that pushed it over the edge.
'...If the Syndicate had such an insane and comprehensive backstory, why the hell was it not explored in the game??'
Reiji wouldn't dare to say he knew every single possible route, because he was far from being that knowledgeable.
But there being something this detailed that he had missed out on?
Almost impossible.
There was nothing about it in the forums either.
'To be fair, those forums were usually run by degenerates who only discussed how to get the heroines in bed rather than the lore itself. But even then, this wouldn't have been obscure knowledge.'
However, this disclosure created another question.
"I don't think I've ever met my maternal Grandfather. Has he passed away?" he inquired.
Daichi laughed.
"That old thing? No, he's very much alive; he just wants nothing to do with our family."
"...Oh."
'Is this a disapproving Father-In-Law plot?'