‘Huang Jing looks beautiful in this picture!’
‘I know, right?’
‘Hard to believe she used to be a teacher, right?’
‘What!? How could a schoolgirl be a teacher?’
‘That’s the thing. She didn’t use to be a schoolgirl. Or even a girl. She was a man called John Goldberg.’
‘John Goldberg? A laowai?’
‘Yeah, a laowai. A highly paid English teacher from the USA.’
‘No way! So, what happened to this… Goldberg?’
‘Well, remember I told you I’m a witch?’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t believe you until you showed me… Wait! You mean you did this!?
‘Yes me, who else? One day I got sick of seeing his foreigner face everywhere. So, I decided to fix him!’
‘Fix him…’
‘Yeah, I cast a spell on him. It was a big one too, almost caused me to pass out with the effort!’
‘So, one day he was a Goldberg and then… POOF! He was Huang Jing?
‘Not exactly; magic doesn’t work so quickly. The change happened over a week.’
‘And no one noticed?’
‘No, the spell fixes that. Magic kind of knits reality together as it works. The only one who could tell what was going on was me.’
‘So even I didn’t notice…’
‘Of course not! Only the magical could tell! It was kind of funny as well. Every day he would come to class and be more and more… Huang Jing.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘On day one, he had a shorter, smaller body and then on the second day came the yellow skin, brown eyes and black hair.’
‘So, his body changed first?’
‘Yeah, magic has a certain order to these things. It was hilarious listening to his Chinese accent develop; by the fourth day, he could barely speak English but was still trying to teach his class as normal!’
‘I can’t believe I didn’t notice that!’
‘Don’t feel bad, like I said only the magical could see it. Next, on the fifth day he… I mean she, just turned up In our school uniform and just sat down like every other student.’
‘That’s incredible… I have so many memories of her as well…’
‘Yeah, that happened on the sixth day. On that day everyone suddenly knew Huang Jing like an old friend and all was well with the world.’
‘You are so amazing! Are you sure I can’t learn to do this too?’

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