The other day, I received a call from an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informing me that my father had gone missing at his workplace, and so I was heading to Egypt.
My father, an archaeologist, had been participating in a large-scale investigation of the Pyramid of King Khufu, jointly conducted by Egypt and archaeologists gathered from around the world.
A week had already passed, yet communication with the site had been completely lost, and not a single member of the expedition team had returned.
Naturally, the Egyptian government treated this mysterious disappearance as a major issue of global concern, and the incident was being covered extensively by the news media.
And indeed, what awaited me upon arriving there were reporters from all over the world, all wanting to hear from the family members. Camera lenses and flashing shutters were directed at me one after another.
For an ordinary third-rate university student like me, standing in front of the media like this felt surreal.
Thanks to arrangements made by the Egyptian government, I exited through a separate entrance.
The sunlight on site was far harsher than I had expected, and sweat immediately poured from my body. Yet because the air was so dry, the heat felt different from the humid heat of Japan.
I boarded a bus sent to collect the families. Inside were relatives of other foreign archaeologists. Some had Asian features, others came from Islamic countries, while others were white or black. The races and nationalities varied greatly.
After the bus drove for a while, the greatest attraction Egypt boasted to tourists—the Three Great Pyramids—appeared before my eyes.
Compared to modern buildings, a height of 137 meters was not particularly tall, but the triangular structure built from an unimaginable 2.3 million stones possessed more than enough overwhelming presence to dominate human beings.
The bus crossed the desert and stopped beside a series of temporary trailers. I was guided into one of the tents spread out in front of them.
"Welcome to Egypt."
A powerfully built man greeted me. One glance was enough to tell he was Egyptian.
Speaking fluent Japanese, he extended his thick arm toward me and firmly shook my pale hand.
He would become my partner here, serving as both porter and interpreter.
"We'll be holding a briefing immediately, so please leave your luggage and come outside."
Following his instructions, I put down my bags and stepped once more into the blazing sunlight, heading toward another tent.
There, several family members and interpreters had already gathered while Egyptian government officials explained the situation.
Through the porter's translation, I learned what had happened to my father.
The primary purpose of this large-scale investigation was the discovery of something new within the so-called King's Chamber, located near the center of the pyramid. Renowned archaeologists from around the world had therefore been assembled to form an expedition team.
Then, one week ago, while conducting research inside the King's Chamber, the entire team suddenly vanished, leaving all their equipment behind.
Of course, the Egyptian government searched the inside and outside of the pyramid, as well as the entire country. Airports were checked too. Yet none of the archaeologists were found.
Although the search was still continuing, the Egyptian government had nearly given up on this incident, which could only be described as a divine disappearance. The purpose of gathering the families here was to arrange the return of the archaeologists' belongings.
Some family members demanded the government continue the investigation. Others burst into tears.
The briefing descended into confusion and angry shouting, but I remained surprisingly calm.
Originally, my relationship with my father had never been very good, and since my mother died five years ago, we had been almost completely estranged. Tuition money was deposited into my bank account every month, but that was the extent of our connection.
After leaving the chaotic briefing, I entered the trailer where my father had been living, guided by the porter.
The lingering presence of my father, felt for the first time in a long while, planted an unexpected sense of nostalgia in my heart.
As always, his desk was covered in scattered documents. There were probably materials there I was never meant to see. Since they were written in English, my mediocre university-level English ability could not translate them.
My father's belongings consisted of a single large bag containing spare clothes, a notebook, and a smartphone.
Inside the notebook was a photograph from a family trip to Hokkaido taken when my mother had still been healthy and alive.
For a man who treated work like his hobby, that felt strangely unexpected to me.
As I flipped through the notebook, I discovered a page filled with frantic scribbles—unusual for my father, who normally wrote very neatly.
Even I could tell from the contents that he had been excited.
"King's Chamber. Throne. Shape. Numbers."
Those were the only words I could decipher from the messy handwriting.
The King's Chamber was where my father and the others had disappeared. I could not understand the meaning of the words "throne," "shape," and "numbers."
The notebook ended there. Every page after that remained blank.
Next, I looked at my father's smartphone. Since he was not very good with technology, it was locked behind a passcode.
The model itself was quite old, from an earlier generation of smartphones.
The more I learned, the more mysterious my father's disappearance became.
Then came that night.
Forced to spend the night in a tent, I was exchanging LINE messages with my girlfriend back in Tokyo. We had been together for three years.
She attended university studying childcare, working hard every day toward becoming a nursery teacher. From the moment I first saw her cute appearance, I had fallen for her, and even now I still remembered how nervous I was the first time we exchanged LINE accounts.
As for me, even though I had come to Egypt using government money, I had no purpose of my own. I merely drifted through daily life at university without any real goal.
I envied her sense of direction, and my feeling that I needed to find something for myself had gradually transformed into impatience and anxiety.
Even during our LINE conversation, as we talked a little about our future together, I felt myself sinking into a whirlpool of uncertainty over what I wanted to do and what I was capable of.
Then suddenly, a smartphone rang.
It was my father's phone. The ringtone, still set to the default, sounded mechanical.
The screen displayed the words "Private Number."
I answered and held it to my ear.
Distorted static-like noise crackled through the speaker. Yet beneath it, I could faintly hear something resembling a voice.
"...to the King's Chamber... the throne..."
The noise made it difficult to hear clearly, but it was definitely my father's voice.
"Dad! Where are you?!"
I shouted, but the call disconnected immediately.
I tried to check the call information, but the phone was locked, preventing me from seeing anything.
Unable to sit still any longer, I grabbed my father's phone, my own phone, and my father's notebook, then burst from the tent and ran through the sand toward the pyramid.
The Pyramid of Khufu has two entrances. The original entrance had been artificially sealed and was not intended for people to enter.
The current tourist entrance lies slightly below the original one and is now used by visitors.
I entered through there as well.
Lights left behind by the investigation team illuminated various points inside, though ordinarily the interior should have been enveloped in complete darkness.
Advancing through the stone corridors, I climbed a stone shaft, passed through the largest passageway—the so-called Grand Gallery—and finally arrived at the chamber containing the sarcophagus.
The King's Chamber.
In other words, wasn't this where my father had wanted me to come?
Lights still shone inside the chamber where the investigation team's equipment remained abandoned, but there was no sign of human presence. I had reached this point surprisingly easily.
What should I do now?
As I thought that, I remembered my father's scribbled note.
Throne. Shape. Numbers.
Yet there was no throne in the sarcophagus chamber. Only a damaged, empty stone coffin remained.
Historical fact still could not deny that this was the chamber of the sarcophagus.
That was precisely why investigations continued even now, driven by the belief that King Khufu's true burial chamber still existed somewhere else.
I approached the sarcophagus, though ordinarily no one should go near it. I hoped there might be some clue.
But the sarcophagus was, after all, just stone. Nothing more than a stone box.
What exactly had happened here?
Thinking that, I took out my father's smartphone. A keypad appeared on the screen, waiting for the unlock code.
My father was not the type to obsess over complicated passwords. It had to be something simple.
The first thing that came to mind was his birthday.
I entered it. Wrong.
Next, I tried my deceased mother's birthday. Wrong again.
Then I realized the only simple number left I could think of was my own birthday.
I quickly entered it.
The phone unlocked and displayed the main screen.
At last, I had a breakthrough.
Immediately, I tried calling back the private number from earlier. But the smartphone gave no response whatsoever.
Searching for another clue, I examined the main screen. My father barely had any apps installed, yet there was one unfamiliar app.
It looked something like a map application used for location tracking.
I tapped it.
As expected, an icon appeared showing the smartphone recognizing its location through satellite positioning, and a screen resembling radar emerged.
I immediately realized it was a floor plan of the sarcophagus chamber.
A red dot was displayed diagonally to the right of the direction I was facing.
Could it be...
Thinking it might be a clue, I slowly followed the app toward the wall.
I headed toward a section slightly behind where the lights had been installed.
It was a complete dead end.
Yet the app indicated something beyond the wall.
What was this? Some kind of joke app?
But then I reconsidered. My father would never install a meaningless app on his phone.
So I touched the section of wall the marker indicated.
One of the stones embedded there showed a faint discoloration. It formed a square shape, as though something had traced over it repeatedly.
"Shape..."
Remembering the note, I moved my finger along the outline.
At that instant, I realized I was no longer in the sarcophagus chamber but standing in a completely unfamiliar corridor.
W-What...
As I panicked over suddenly being transported elsewhere, I heard something approaching from the darkness ahead.
Squinting into the gloom, I saw a silhouette drawing nearer.
Could it be my father?
That hope vanished immediately.
The creature possessed a massive body and the face of a dog—a gigantic monster so grotesque it defied belief.
Brandishing a huge sword, it charged toward me at full speed.
In terror, I ran.
I fled faster than I had ever run in my life. If I had not, it surely would have killed me.
But eventually the straight corridor ended in a dead end.
Growling, the monster continued charging after me.
There had to be some escape route.
Then I noticed a slot in the wall ahead, shaped like a long narrow rectangle.
Without thinking, I shoved my own smartphone into it, despite believing it could never possibly fit.
Yet the phone slid perfectly into place, as though it had been intended for that purpose all along.
With the grinding sound of moving stone, the wall slowly opened.
I ran again.
But after only a few steps, the sensation of the floor vanished, and I realized I had been thrown into zero gravity.
I had fallen into a vertical shaft.
Then a sharp pain shot through my backside, and through clouds of dust I realized I was sitting in a chair.
"The throne."
The words returned to me.
Before my eyes spread an extravagant golden chamber.
Moreover, its size exceeded any space I had ever seen before.
Then suddenly, knowledge began pouring into my mind like water rushing down a drain.
I understood.
I understood the meaning behind my father's final note:
The King's Chamber. The throne. Shape. Numbers.
I understood why King Khufu had built the pyramid.
Having received all this knowledge, I stood up and moved behind the throne, stopping before a golden wall.
Then, using my finger, I wrote upon the wall the number printed on the tag of the shirt I was wearing.
The gold shifted into silver, as though it had been waiting for my touch.
And when I finished writing the number, the golden wall slowly opened, revealing a golden passageway beyond.
Yes.
My father must surely be ahead.
The other members of the expedition too.
The King's Throne had taught me everything.
Every shape and every number in this world possessed meaning.
And beyond this point, that world required those shapes and numbers.
[The King's Intent] — End