Empty node_modules folder appears when using volume bindings in docker-compose

Question

To containerize React application I've created Dockerfile.frontend & docker-compose.yml with the following contents:

Dockerfile.frontend:

FROM node:16

WORKDIR /usr/src/app

COPY package*.json ./

RUN npm install; \
    # NOTE: Something change in Node v.16 and after 'npm install' 
    #       it throws out the error "EACCES: permission denied,
    #       mkdir '/usr/app/node_modules/.cache'". Changing ownership 
    #       of /node_modules folder solves the problem.
    chown -R node:node ./node_modules;

EXPOSE 3000

docker-compose.yml:

version: '3.8'

services:

    frontend:
        container_name: front
        build:
            context: ./
            dockerfile: Dockerfile.frontend
        volumes:
            # NOTE: Protect the 'node_modules' folder from being erased
            - '/usr/src/app/node_modules'
            - './:/usr/src/app'
        ports:
            - '3000:3000'
        environment:
            - NODE_ENV=development
        command: npm start

NOTE : You can clone entire project for tests from GitHub

As you can see in the docker-compose.yml there are two volumes:

• ./:/usr/src/app - mapping to my project_root directory
• /usr/src/app/node_modules - anonymous volume to prevent node_modules from being erased when './:/usr/src/app' volume maps (to get more details see - Docker Compose: volumes without colon (:)).

And everything works like a charm, but after the first launch of the container, an empty node_modules directory appears in the project_root with the owner root:root. I am trying to delete this folder but it reappears after running the container. If I change the order in which the volumes are bound, nothing changes in the behavior.

I'm assuming this is because the both volume bindings overlap in the /usr/src/app/ directory. But I don't want node_modules full of the modules to be installed in the root of my project and I don't want to see an empty node_modules folder there. How to prevent an empty node_modules directory from appearing?

NOTE : There is an other answer to question like this, but the order of volume bindings in docer-compose.yml is different, although the result is the same! This means that the reason is not the order of volume bindings, like mentioned answer suggest.