That is a great challenge! Herewith my interpretation. I included more noise/grain on purpose because it adds something to the scene, I think... I also opted for a color version. Wrt crop I went back and forth between 1 by 1 and 4 by 5. After throwing up a coin, I did choose the 1 by 1 crop. Unfortunately I was not able to recover the highlights in LR. Maybe others are more succesfull in other programs.
changes as of 12/2:I accidentally deleted the old images (the square and 4by5), so here is a replacement, processed differently. Here processed in PN first, followed by some changes in structure, etc. I cropped differently after studying the scene more carefully. I kept a 2x3 size to stipulate the narrowness and height of the room and to give more clues about the room itself, especially after Bjørn pointed me at the existence of a surveillance camera (thanks Bjørn!). These clues trigger probably questions instead of answers.
All in all, this is my final entry:
