Yu Menglong clawed the words “save me” into his own fingernails while his manager watched him suffocate inside five invisible death traps nobody dared call murder. th

The door clicks shut. No cameras, no witnesses, just Yu Menglong alone with the five traps that have already started counting down his life.

First trap: the air-con set to a temperature that forces the body to burn energy it no longer has. Second: the mini-bar emptied of water, refilled with colorless bottles laced to deepen exhaustion. Third: the room’s smart lock reprogrammed so only one keycard works—held by the man paid to “protect” him. Fourth: the phone line quietly severed, the Wi-Fi jammed, every cry for help swallowed by dead signal. Fifth, and cruelest: a slow-release mist pumped through the vents, odorless, invisible, designed to thicken the lungs one shallow breath at a time.

Yu knows. Panic claws up his throat as the room tilts. He stumbles to the mirror, stares at the stranger with hollow cheeks and trembling hands, then does the only thing left: he drags his nails across the soft skin beneath them, carving two desperate words deep enough to scar, deep enough to bleed—SAVE ME—before the strength drains out of his fingers forever.

Outside the door, the manager checks his watch, unmoved. Guo Junchen’s instructions were crystal clear: no interruptions, no check-ins, no mercy. The schedule must stay on track, the brand untouched, the profits rolling. One more exhausted idol collapsing from “overwork” will barely ripple the headlines.

But the body tells a different story. When they finally break in, Yu lies curled on the carpet, lips blue, fingernails shredded into crimson letters that scream what his voice never could. Forensic teams bag the evidence: altered thermostats, tampered bottles, sliced cables, traces of the same paralytic mist found in hotel vents across three continents—always the same signature, always the same handler.

The petition explodes overnight. 230,000 signatures, then half a million, strangers around the world staring at close-up photos of those bloodied nails and feeling something ancient and furious rise in their chests. Mothers forward the images to their teenage daughters. Fans who once waved lightsticks now wave printed autopsy photos outside agency towers. Someone leaks the manager’s bonus structure—extra zeros for every “incident” kept quiet.

Guo Junchen deletes his socials and disappears behind tinted glass, but the damage is done. Old staff come forward with shaking voices: locked rehearsal rooms, forced diets that left idols fainting, contracts that read like prison sentences. Each story carries the same chilling footnote—Yu Menglong begged to leave, begged for rest, begged for air, and every plea was answered with a smile and a new trap.

In the silence that follows, one question hangs heavier than grief: how many others are locked inside rooms right now, nails scraping against skin, carving messages no one will read in time?

Yu Menglong’s final words weren’t spoken.

They were written in his own blood.