Power button not working. Disassembled before it's inaccessible.

ASUS TUF A15 Gaming Laptop (Model FA507) As the title says, the power button has stopped working. The charging light comes on fine when plugged in. I'm 99% certain the power button is the issue, as it was becoming increasingly finicky over the past few months. I would have to press repeatedly in slightly different ways until I hit the "sweet spot" and it turned on. Or sometimes it wouldn't work, until I put it away in my backpack and tried again later. This leads me to believe there is an issue with the connection between the power button and the rest of the board. Now that that's out of the way...

I'm extremely broke, and am in my final year of uni to try to escape poverty. I got a quote from a local repair shop for $700 and three weeks of repair, which I definitely cannot afford (in both time and money). So I figured I might as well and try to apply some of that electrical engineering knowledge I've been gaining at school. I'm currently taking a PCB design class, and am starting to become familiar with working hands-on. But after having fully disassembled the laptop, I found out the hard way that there's a metal plate covering the back side of the palm panel that cannot be removed. I should have watched a tear down video first. I'm incredibly dumb, I'm sorry 😔

I was thinking about devising a work around if I can identify where the signal from the power button interfaces with the mother board. If I can find that, I might be able to engineer a DIY method of shorting that connection (thus simulating the power button). I've identified three ribbon cables coming out of the palm panel, indicated by the red arrows. The teal arrow points to the cable for the touch pad, and the yellow arrow points to the WLAN chip. The power button is located at the top left in the first photo. I suspect it might be the topmost cable (5th and 6th photo) due to it's closest proximity to the power button. The leftmost cable (2nd and 4th photo) is yellow and is marked with the text VCC and RBG. While it seems promising, I think it might just be for the rgb lighting of the keyboard. The battery connects to the wire at the bottom of the 7th photo. Can anyone help me identify which trace is associated with the power button? I have a multimeter, and can provide additional photos as needed. Thank you in advance!

I cross posted this on Reddit in hopes of increasing exposure. I hope that's okay!