“Tick-tock, Tokiwabashi. Time is money.”

“Tick-tock, Tokiwabashi. Time is money.” is a pun coined by Kobayashi and repeated by Matsumiya as a task-force catchphrase. Its comic surface—an insistence on haste tied to a bridge name—acquires investigative weight when the detectives recognize that Tokiwabashi is one of several bridges written on a calendar in Mutsuo Koshikawa’s apartment. The phrase becomes a small verbal link between routine banter and the case’s most puzzling object.

Origin and Use

Kobayashi uses the saying while leaving the room after examining the calendar. He glances at his watch, says he cannot stay, and tells the others to keep working without wasting time. The brisk instruction culminates in the rhyme, delivered with a conceited chuckle; he then slaps Sakagami on the shoulder and leaves. The line is thus introduced as part pep talk, part self-satisfied joke, rather than as a deliberate deduction.

Sakagami grins at the expression and calls the pun lame. Matsumiya notes that Kobayashi is in unusually high spirits, but the phrase nevertheless travels beyond its inventor: later, Matsumiya repeats it to Kaga as a saying currently popular with the task force. The joke has become office shorthand, carrying Kobayashi’s urgency into a different conversation.

The Calendar Connection

The pun’s key word is Tokiwabashi, also named among the bridge annotations scribbled on the calendar in Koshikawa’s apartment. When Matsumiya explains this to Kaga, he lists Tokiwabashi Bridge and Nihonbashi Bridge as examples in a longer, unexplained series. The detectives do not yet know what the annotations mean, and Matsumiya says the task force has no answer. The coincidence between the catchphrase and the calendar’s bridge names gives an otherwise throwaway line a second, evidentiary context.

That context lands during a conversation about how little the investigators know of Koshikawa’s life. Matsumiya has stressed that they have no photograph, residency certificate, health-insurance enrollment, or known social connections from which to form an image of him. Kaga urges him to change perspective and consider what kind of life Koshikawa led. As Matsumiya turns to pay, he mentions the calendar annotations; Kaga grips his shoulder and pulls him back with extraordinary force. The phrase itself does not explain the mystery, but its recurrence places the bridge clue in front of Kaga at the moment his attention sharply fixes on it.

Narrative Function

The expression shifts from comic workplace color to a verbal trigger associated with a concrete clue. Its repetition makes the Tokiwabashi name memorable before the calendar’s annotations have been deciphered, while the contrast between the pun’s casual origin and Kaga’s sudden seriousness gives the exchange a pointed change in tone. The saying remains a joke, but the bridge embedded in it is no longer merely a rhyme: it belongs to the unexplained pattern the investigation must interpret.