It'd be helpful if you didn't ignore things. It doesn't matter if you call the .exe directly or not. You seem to have a lot of "wired reasons" for doing things and making life difficult for yourself.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32;
use Win32::GuiTest qw(:ALL);

my $calc = "C:\\ProgramData\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Start Menu\\Programs\
+\Accessories\\Calculator.lnk";
    
print "nothing else will happen until you close calc.exe\n";
system($calc);

print "you closed calc.exe, moving on...\n";
print "using `start` to launch calc.exe will return once calc.exe is l
+oaded\n"; 

system('start "" "' . $calc . '"');
print "\n\nyep, still running!\n\n";
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