Hello, I'm trying to expose the total number of items for a searched term in Json.

Trying to modify /views/itemlist/view.json.php the search case.

Can anyone help with how to get the total number of results?

There is a specific case for search results.

You can print the count of the items there.
The proper way to handle it though would be through a K2 plugin and not hacking K2's core.