My only option left is to wait 3 days for the mini-HDMI adapter and buy a set of Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to arrive. TL DR, I cannot perform headless setup after all possible options I've came across. All of them either time-out, or refuse connection. My PC, which is connected to the same 2.4ghz wifi, tried to perform ssh on every IP address that is connected to my wifi router admin portal, despite knowing the pi zero isn't showing up in there. I removed the country line in the wpa_nf file (living in South Korea) I found by reading another forum of the same issue, to no avail. I have switched cables and power adapter to make sure power isn't an issue. I've made sure that what I typed in wpa_nf is correct, letter by letter (in fact, I compared it to my other server Raspberry Pi 4's wpa_nf, which worked, to copy exact letter by letter). I've placed my raspberry pi directly next to the router, so range isn't an issue. I made sure that I am connecting to the 2.4ghz wifi, not the 5ghz. When revisiting the SD card, these two files are gone, but I have made sure to re-add the files again. Neither of them are able to connect to my wifi router. I have both downloaded, drag, and manually place an SSH file and a wpa_nf file onto my SD card, and used the CTRL+Shift+X hotkey option when flashing my SD card. Both are not able to show up in my wifi router admin portal.

I initially tried the Raspberry Pi OS (32-bit) option, before trying the OS Full (32-bit) version. I used a Raspberry Pi Imager v1.6.2 to flash onto my micro SD card. I followed couple youtube tutorials on starting it up headless. I will create a new post that will ask a slightly different question, now that I abandoned the headless setup. For now, this would be my temporary work-around. Unfortunately I do not know exactly why, and I wanted to know why. UPDATE: Semi-Solved.? I've plugged in a USB Dongle onto my Raspberry Pi Zero W, and it had finally connected to my wifi router.

Raspberry pi zero w wireless setup