How to avoid circular references in Entity Core?

Question

I have this entities:

public Order
{
    long Id;
    
    .......

    List<Items> Items = new List<Items>();
}


public Items
{
    long Id;

    ......


    Order Order;
}

And this is my query witn EF Core 7:

_context.Orders
    .AsNotracking()
    .Include(X => x.Items)
    .FirstOrDefault(x => x.Id == 1);

I am using AsNotraking() because I would like to include only the related entities that I indicate with a direct inculde. Son in this case I wouldn't expect that the items would populate the Order property.

However, with this query I would expect to populate the Order property of the Items, because I am explicitly indicate that I want the property, with ThenInclude():

_context.Orders
    .AsNotracking()
    .Include(X => x.Items).ThenInclude(x => x.Factura)
    .FirstOrDefault(x => x.Id == 1);

I have read this question: Avoid or control circular references in Entity Framework Core

But the solution here is to configure in ASP the serialization. But my case is different.

I have a gRPC service, using code first, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/grpc/code-first?view=aspnetcore-7.0

So setting the serialization at ASP level is not the solution.

So my question is, how to solve the problem at EF Core level? Because I thought that with AsNoTracking() entity resolution is not used so I don't know why the order property is populate if I don't use an explicit query.

One solution it is to clear the property iterating all the items of the order, but i would like to avoid this solution, if it is possible with EF Core to solve the problem in some way.

Thanks.