Data type selection after addition/subtraction step doesn't seem to work in Query Editor

Hi everyone, 

I'm trying to create a mapping table in the Query Editor where I map values against their closest match. In order to do that, I create a new column in the query editor where I add 1 to the numerical value in another column. My problem is that after I do this addition step and try to change the data type of the new column from integer to "text", the data doesn't look like it actually changes type as it is still cursive as opposed to non-cursive, which is how text type data usually looks.

The problem with this is that when I then use the "new" column to merge queries with a column in a different table, it doesn't seem to work as it should - I only get null values after the merge queries step. 

Please see the below screenshot for example, the leftmost column and the rightmost column have the same data type (text) but for some reason the data doesn't look the same; in the leftmost column the data is non cursive and in the rightmost colum it is cursive.  This makes me think that for some reason the type transformation I have done doesn't work as it should. 

The rightmost column has been added in the query editor by adding 1 to the leftmost column, and I'm wondering if this addition is what makes it impossible to correctly convert to text afterwards. 

Does anyone know if I am correct in this assumption? Is there any workaround? Thanks in advance!