Loop (novel)

Loop (ループ, Rūpu^?) is the third in the series of Ring novels by Koji Suzuki.

The story revolves around a simulated reality, exactly the same as our own, known as the Loop: created to simulate the emergence and evolution of life. It is in this alternate universe that the events of the previous novels, Ring and Spiral took place.

The story revolves around a medical student named Kaoru Futami. His father, Hideyuki, contracts a deadly disease known as Metastatic Human Cancer (MHC). This is a terminal cancer that involves all forms of organic life: humans, animals and plants. Events lead his father to tell Kaoru more about the LOOP project he worked on. The LOOP project is essentially a virtual reality simulator which is meant to represent the emergence of life and how the world most likely evolved. It is known that almost everyone who was involved in the LOOP project has died of the same cancer.

Kaoru, now 20, ends up studying medicine taking tutoring on as a part-time job. He often likes to relax in the public pool where he first meets Reiko and her son Ryoji. He later meets them at the Cancer Ward where his father is being nursed. Reiko asks him to tutor her son, who also has the virus. Kaoru takes on this challenge mainly because he falls in love with Reiko, who is about 15 years his senior. Reiko is also a carrier of the MHC virus, much like his mother Machiko, but neither one of them actually contract the virus. Eventually, Kaoru and Reiko start to have sex with one another once Ryoji goes through Chemotherapy sessions. When Ryoji figures this out, he commits suicide by falling backwards out of a 12-story building onto the concrete. It's about a month later when Reiko and Kaoru meet one more time where she thinks she's pregnant with Kaoru's child. He also reads Ryoji's suicide note which tells him the motivation for his suicide.