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A sanatorium on the Siberian border was suddenly blocked by a snowstorm and became an isolated island. Three sophisticated secret room murders occurred one after another, and strange symbols such as playing cards, chess, checkers, etc. Appeared one after another, implying that the unsolved cases of forty years ago are closely connected with the current killings. A painter with retrograde amnesia, a veteran who has endured for forty years, a head nurse whose identity is a mystery... Seven people are trapped in a desperate situation, and the truth is reversed layer by layer amidst lies and logical traps. When the blizzard stops, what is buried by the ice and snow is not only the border, but also the darkness of human nature and the secrets of history.

Seventeen years ago, on a snowy night in Hokkaido, a "secret room murder case" nailed Hoshizono Yutaka's father to the pillar of shame. My father passed away unjustly, and the truth sank into the frozen ground. Seventeen years later, Feng, who has become a best-selling mystery writer, returns to his hometown and uses his pen as a blade to tear open the seal of time. Broken marks in the snow, rust stains on the iron box, the lye secret room, the fragments of a mobile phone that had been buried for seventeen years... Under the shadow guardianship of retired detective Morita and the bloody testimony of witness Shizuko Nakamura, the evidence of the timber merchant Tatsuya Kobayashi's guilt fell away layer by layer. However, when the truth breaks through the fog, Feng hears a heavier question: Can a life crushed by time be reborn? Is delayed justice still justice? "The Crime of Traces of Time" uses "traces" as its eyes to weave a double helix of reasoning and philosophy - traces of snow, rust, and hearts, all testimonies that cannot be erased by time. This is not only a lonely pursuit to clear his father's name, but also a deep gaze on justice, human nature and redemption. When there is only one cigarette butt left in the ashtray in the final chapter, what we see is not the end, but the glimmer of reconciliation between the soul and the light after traveling through the long night.