Something seems unusual about your system. Are you using an unusual profile or heavily customized make.conf? net-libs/nodejs-20.5.1 is satisfied with dev-libs/openssl-3.0.10 out of the box here.
I have a fully updated world with a KDE desktop, and don't have OpenSSL 1.1 installed at all.
eselect profile list says I have selected the default one: default/linux/amd64/17.1 (stable) *
I would not say it is something unusual...
But funny thing is that if I emerge that one specific package with -1, it does not pull this dependency. It seems like something broken inside the portage.
I have a fully updated world with a KDE desktop, and don't have OpenSSL 1.1 installed at all.