Okitegami Kyouko no Chousenjou

The third volume in NISIOISIN’s acclaimed Forgetful Detective Series delivers a masterfully twisted game of memory and murder, where the perfect crime collides with the most imperfect witness. Kujirai is a man who prides himself on leaving no traces, a would-be criminal who meticulously plots every detail of his misdeeds—except for one glaring contingency. To secure his ironclad alibi, he enlists the one person whose testimony cannot be doubted: Okitegami Kyouko, the beautiful, white-haired detective renowned for her unshakable integrity. But there is a devastating catch to her credibility—Kyouko’s memory resets completely with each new dawn, leaving her with only the events of a single day to rely upon. In this latest short-story collection, "Okitegami Kyouko's Alibi Testimony," the boundaries between investigator, witness, and suspect blur into a dizzying puzzle. When a brutal murder unfolds, the forgetful detective finds herself thrust into the precarious role of corroborating Kujirai’s account, forcing her to navigate a labyrinth of half-remembered clues and deliberate deceptions before the sun sets on her consciousness. As the clock ticks relentlessly toward the reset of her mind, Kyouko must unravel a conspiracy that seeks to exploit her very condition as the ultimate loophole—a crime designed specifically to vanish into the gaps of her fractured memory. NISIOISIN weaves his signature razor-sharp dialogue and intricate plotting into a taut psychological thriller, where every testimony is a double-edged sword and every passing hour erodes the line between truth and fabrication. With the stakes heightened by the detective’s own limitations, this installment challenges not only the culprit’s carefully constructed alibi but also the very nature of justice in a world where memory is both the strongest evidence and the most fragile alibi of all.