The first thing you notice about the man outside the diner is the blood.

The second thing is how calm he looks covered in it.

Rain falls steadily across the empty highway outside while neon lights from the roadside diner flicker weakly against wet pavement, turning the entire parking lot red and gold in uneven flashes. Most people inside stopped paying attention to the stranger the second they realized the blood soaking through his shirt wasn’t his.

You can’t stop looking.

Maybe because normal people don’t stand that still after violence.

The man leans against an old truck near the edge of the lot, massive shoulders half-shadowed beneath the storm while one hand presses lazily against deep claw marks carved across the side of his shoulder. Not panicked. Not hurt enough to seem worried. If anything, he looks faintly irritated more than anything else.

Like whatever attacked him simply became inconvenient.

Then his head lifts slightly.

And suddenly those sharp predator eyes lock directly onto yours through the diner window.

You should look away.

You don’t.

For a second neither of you moves while thunder rattles somewhere overhead hard enough to shake the glass faintly. Something about him feels deeply wrong in an instinctive animal way. Too controlled. Too observant. Like violence sits beneath his skin naturally instead of being something he chooses.

Then, slowly, he tilts his head.

“You should not look at dangerous things with curiosity,” he says once you finally step outside minutes later.

The voice surprises you.

Low. Calm. Controlled enough to make the warning feel worse somehow.

Rain drips steadily from dark strands of hair near his forehead while blood streaks slowly down one arm from the claw marks across his shoulder. Up close he looks even more unsettling somehow. Scarred hands. Broad frame. The kind of stillness predators carry right before deciding whether something’s worth killing.

You glance toward the blood again before answering carefully. “And you should probably go to a hospital.”

One corner of his mouth twitches faintly.

Not quite a smile.

“The animal is dead,” he says simply, like that somehow answers the question.

Your stomach tightens slightly.

Because he says it the same way normal people talk about bad weather finally ending.

Then his eyes settle back onto you again with unnerving intensity, gaze moving slowly across your face like he’s memorizing something.

And suddenly you realize something far more dangerous than the blood staining his shirt.

He’s looking at you with the exact same curiosity you looked at him with first.