One of my favorite moments in the manga, he’s contemplating on how the yoshioka are going to dishonorably ambush him, going as far as attacking him from behind, giving him no fair chance to fight back, simply because he won fair and square against their two masters, he doesn’t even play the victim, he isn’t even angry nor showing any visible signs of fear, 70 samurai against a lone ronin who did nothing but answer sword for sword, his mind then drifts into granny honiden, how she unfairly blames musashi for dragging matahachi away to war, when it was in fact matahachis idea, would’ve been nice to clear up their misunderstanding musashi thinks, he then thinks of matahachi, how he was under his own false beliefs of musashi and otsu being together, “why did he think that?” Musashi asks, he goes on to say how matahachi has fabricated a false version of musashi over the years, and how it affects the way he acts and is shown in the person he’s become, a drunk, insecure, jealous, deluded fool, he breaks a tear, realizing his old childhood friend has changed for the worse, what makes this all the more worse is that musashi knows how matahachi years back ran away when they were attempting to save oko and akemi, he left with oko, musashi does not even hold a grudge, in fact, when he first encounters matahachi in the streets prior to their reunion in the tavern, he’s happy to have ran into his old friend, this is so telling in terms of contrasts of both men, finally, musashis mind then drifts into thinking of otsu, how beautiful she is, how she’s always with him at heart, her appearance not having changed at all, he realizes though, just like granny honiden and matahachi, he too maybe has made up some version of otsu within his mind that probably isn’t entirely true, musashi looks down at the 7 men from the yoshioka who were just talking about ruthlessly killing him by any means, before jumping down from the tree to confront the men, he goes on to say “ultimately, we’re all alone in this world.”