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I deselected a package and changed my mind. How to select it without re-emerging?

I executed

    emerge --deselect xournalpp

, which means "I don't need the `xournalpp` package anymore", so it can be removed by a future `--depclean` action in case Portage figures `xournalpp` is not a dependency of any other installed package.

Hence the aforementioned command **does not** uninstall Xournalpp. It only removes it from the [world file][1].

Now, suppose I realize that was a mistake<sup>*</sup> and want to keep Xournalpp. It seems only natural to use `--select`:

    --select [ y | n ], -w
           Add specified packages to the world set (inverse of --oneshot).

However, Portage wants to re-emerge the package!

    # emerge --ask --select xournalpp
    These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

    Calculating dependencies... done!
    [ebuild   R    ] app-text/xournalpp-1.0.20

    Would you like to merge these packages? [Yes/No]

Although answering Yes would solve the problem, it entails essentially reinstalling the package (extracting the compressed file, re-compiling the package, ...), which is a waste of time — that may take from seconds to hours — and CPU cycles.

How do I add `xournalpp` back to the world file without emerging the already installed package?

<sup>*Actually my motivation to run that command was to find out the installed dependencies of Xournalpp that were not dependencies to any other package. I realize now there are better ways to do that, but the question stands.</sup>

[1]: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Selected-packages_set_(Portage)