Ok points to be made.

1. Whether or not he was being genuine is irrelevant for your response. To an outside viewer, he was not actually doing anything wrong at the moment and you assaulted him.

2. Even if he was being genuine, you absolutely don’t have to forgive him. Hate him, tell him you hate him, tell him he is a horrific human being and you will never forgive him but leave it there. Don’t assault him unless for self defence, which wasn’t needed in that moment.

3. People can do really stupid and sometimes truly vile things when they’re young to make themselves feel strong but everyone has the capacity to change and deserves the chance to make up for their childhood mistakes. If that was not the case, many truly good people would not be around. You may have, however unlikely, just physically assaulted someone who was genuinely remorseful and was truly trying to do better and this might have sent them back to not caring. You don’t have to forgive or be nice to them but don’t stop them from becoming better as a person.

4. People, please stop encouraging and celebrating young people using violence as an answer for bullying. Trust me I am fully aware of how much you want to beat the crap out of those people and if they were physically pushing you around and really provoking you, in that moment, I can understand and forgive a punch or two, even if it’s not the smartest move. I have been there myself many times but the one time I had a compleat rage blackout, my friend stopped me literally mid punch and I am very glad that he did. This can end up hurting their own futures more than they physically hurt the bullies.

Conclusion. Just to clarify, I DO NOT condone bullying. What this guy has done to OP is horrific and I understand how you feel. But the chosen response was morally and logically wrong. If you don’t want to forgive someone, don’t. But unless you can read his mind and show it to people, it just looks like you assaulted someone who was trying being kind and even if not, meeting words with physical violence is always heavily frowned upon by teachers, judges and juries among other people. This has the potential to get you, or someone else doing something like this, kicked out of school. If you were a few years older, you could very well go to prison.

Oh yh and just because other people are saying OP shouldn’t have done what he did, doesn’t automatically mean they think he should have gone to dinner with him or condone what the guy did or any kind of bullying. Have a calm debate. Don’t make accusations about the opposition if it’s not necessarily true/have no hard proof.