Spring Boot Json deserialization with slashes

Question

In a Spring boot 2.2.X app, I have a rest endpoint that accepts any simple Json object. The java type used to accommodate this is Map<String,Object>.

Example input:

{
   "productId":123,
   "type": Perishable
   "location":"\\server\path\to\images\123.png"
}

I'm facing unexpected behavior with the image file location String. In my controller, when I inspect the contents of the Map<String,Object> I see the following value. Some slashes are stripped, and some aren't. (I used a custom mapper to allow slashes at all places in json -> JsonParser.Feature "allow_backslash_escaping_any_character").

@PostMapping(value = "products}")
public UUID persistProduct(@RequestBody @NotNull Map<String,Object> parameters){
    return this.productService.persistProduct(parameters);
}

Note that the first two backslashes are rendered as one, but it's actually still two backslashes. My app now deserialized this Map back to a json string, to persist it in the database. This is done by using standard Jackson classes:

public static String toJsonString(Object o){
    try{
        return new ObjectMapper().registerModule(new JavaTimeModule()).writer().writeValueAsString(o);
    }
    catch (JsonProcessingException e){
        throw new UncheckedWrapperException("Converting an object to a JSON literal string", e);
    }
}

Once persisted to the database the entire Json becomes:

If I now change the input by consistently escaping every backslash character with another backslash:

{
   "productId":123,
   "type": Perishable
   "location":"\\\\server\\path\\to\\images\\123.png"
}

The result in the controller looks promising, but the database record now contains ALL slashes (so the escaping suddenly has no effect, which means to many slashes are stored?)

I don't really understand this behavior. Is there a way to tell Spring or Jackson to store in the database EXACTLY what is being entered in the input json? I obviously would also like to avoid jeopardizing the endpoint's security by simply disabling this.