Koji Suzuki - The Complete Ring Trilogy - Ring, Spiral, Loop

KOJI SUZUKI

THE COMPLETE RING TRILOGY

Ring Spiral Loop

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper Voyager 2015

Ring

Copyright © Koji Suzuki 2003

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2004,

First published in the USA by Vertical, Inc 2003,

Originally published in Japan as Ringu by Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo, 1991

Cover photograph/illustration © Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy/Getty Images

Spiral

Copyright © Koji Suzuki 2004

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2005,

First published in the USA by Vertical, Inc 2004,

Originally published in Japan as Rasen by Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo, 1995

Cover photograph © pierre d’alancaisez/Alamy

Loop

Copyright © Koji Suzuki 2005

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2006,

First published in the USA by Vertical, Inc 2005,

Originally published in Japan as Rupu by Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo, 1998

Cover photographs © Sean Murphy/Getty Images (dust cloud); Karl Weather/Getty Images (motorcycle).

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2007

Koji Suzuki asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBNs:

Ring : 9780007331574 Spiral : 9780007331581 Loop : 9780007331598

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2015 ISBN: 9780008121815

Version: 2016-12-14

Cover

Title Page KOJI SUZUKI THE COMPLETE RING TRILOGY Ring Spiral Loop

Copyright

Ring

Spiral

Loop

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

RING

KOJI SUZUKI

Translation

Robert B. Rohmer

Glynne Walley

Cover

Title Page

Part One: Autumn

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Part Two: Highlands

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Part Three: Gusts

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part Four: Ripples

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

September 5, 1990, 10:49 pm, Yokohama

A row of condominium buildings, each fourteen stories high, ran along the northern edge of the housing development next to the Sankeien garden. Although built only recently, nearly all the units were occupied. Nearly a hundred dwellings were crammed into each building, but most of the inhabitants had never even seen the faces of their neighbors. The only proof that people lived here came at night, when windows lit up.

Off to the south the oily surface of the ocean reflected the glittering lights of a factory. A maze of pipes and conduits crawled along the factory walls like blood vessels on muscle tissue. Countless lights played over the front wall of the factory like insects that glow in the dark; even this grotesque scene had a certain type of beauty. The factory cast a wordless shadow on the black sea beyond.

A few hundred meters closer, in the housing development, a single new two-story home stood among empty lots spaced at precise intervals. Its front door opened directly onto the street, which ran north and south, and beside it was a one-car garage. The home was ordinary, like those found in any new housing development anywhere, but there were no other houses behind or beside it. Perhaps owing to their inconvenience for transport links, few of the lots had been sold, and For Sale signs could be seen here and there all along the street. Compared to the condos, which were completed at about the same time and which were immediately snapped up by buyers, the housing development looked quite lonely.

A beam of fluorescent light fell from an open window on the second floor of the house onto the dark surface of the street below. The light, the only one in the house, came from the room of Tomoko Oishi. Dressed in shorts and a white T-shirt, she was slouched in a chair reading a book for school; her body was twisted into an impossible position, legs stretched out toward an electric fan on the floor. Fanning herself with the hem of her T-shirt to allow the breeze to hit her bare flesh, she muttered about the heat to no one in particular. A senior at a private girls’ high school, she had let her homework pile up over the summer vacation; she had played too much, and she blamed it on the heat. The summer, however, hadn’t really been all that hot. There hadn’t been many clear days, and she hadn’t been able to spend nearly as much time at the beach as she did most summers. And what’s more, as soon as vacation was over, there were five straight days of perfect summer weather. It irritated Tomoko: she resented the clear sky.

How was she supposed to study in this stupid heat?

With the hand she had been running through her hair Tomoko reached over to turn up the volume of the radio. She saw a moth alight on the window screen beside her, then fly away somewhere, blown by the wind from the fan. The screen trembled slightly for a moment after the bug had vanished into the darkness.

She had a test tomorrow, but she was getting nowhere. Tomoko Oishi wasn’t going to be ready for it even if she pulled an all-nighter.

She looked at the clock. Almost eleven. She thought of watching the day’s baseball wrap-up on TV. Maybe she’d catch a glimpse of her parents in the infield seats. But Tomoko, who desperately wanted to get into college, was worried about the test. All she had to do was get into college. It didn’t matter where, as long as it was a college. Even then, what an unfulfilling summer vacation it had been! The foul weather had kept her from having any real fun, while the oppressive humidity had kept her from getting any work done.